Last August, a kid who looked like he could be the front man for the band, She Wants Revenge, had his life changed when, with an overflow crowd of 17,174 slack-jawed fans watching on, he performed a trick on is 250cc motocross bike called “The Volt”. The off-the-bike trick was so iconoclastic and executed so precisely that it won him the Moto X Best Trick Gold Medal at the X Games 13. Thrust into the white hot spotlight that only the X Games can make burn so brightly, the rider named Kyle Loza went from a demure church going young man from Trabuco Canyon, California to a globally known alternative sports athlete. A few months later, the Monster Energy-supported athlete, almost mistakenly, conjured up another revolutionary new trick — this one called Electric Death.
“When I go up the ramp, I have to stall out the bike and really have to loop it,” explains Loza of how the trick is actually performed. “Then I jump through the bars and do a sort of Dead Body. Once my left arm is straight out, I look left and backwards and flip my hand around and grab back on to the bars. Then I flip around the rest of the way with my body doing a full body flip above my bars. Once I get around, I stall out and just kind of fall back down onto my bike.”
So highly evolved and creative was the Electric Trick death that heading into the 2008 ESPN Moto X World Championships at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego last spring, everyone present was pretty much prepared to hand the Gold Medal over to Loza; however, in attempting the trick, Loza’s hand slipped off the bar and he fell upon landing both runs. It was a shame, too, because he had essentially pulled the trick off while up in the air. No big deal though, as the Monster Energy pilot has been fine-tuning and practicing the trick — amongst many others — all summer long. All this withstanding, come the Summer X Games in a few weeks time, Kyle Loza has already been tapped as the man to beat. As they say on ESPN/ABC, stay tuned!