This Year's Stunt Season Starts With A Bang At Team X-Treem's Star-Studded Stunt Show In Lakeland, Florida. Hundreds Of Stunters Came From Across The U.S. And Brazil Only To Have Their Asses Handed To Them By Local Boy Kyle Woods, Who Proved Beyond A Doubt He's This Season's Rider To Beat
While the mainstream motorcycle industry marks Daytona Beach Bike Week its official season opener, the stunt world kicks off its party a few weeks earlier and a hundred-odd miles farther south with Team X-Treem's annual two-day Stuntwars extravaganza at Lakeland Dragstrip in Lakeland, Florida. Now in its sixth year, Stuntwars is by far the biggest (and best) stunt event in the nation. This year's running hosted 150 qualified stunters (and more than 15,000 spectators) hailing from all corners of the country-including Hawaii.
Although Stuntwars doesn't officially start until Saturday morning, many riders arrived up to a week early to get a head start on the track, which was open to riders all week. Dan Jackson, Darius Khashabi and Kane Friesen were just a few of the riders who spent most of the week at Lakeland getting up to speed for the main event. With each day that passed more riders arrived to work off the winter rust, and by Friday afternoon there were 200-plus riders on the track. The track was separated into two zones to more safely accommodate the large number of riders. One section was reserved for those working on slow-speed tricks such as circles, burnouts and bar tricks. The other section was for those working on high-speed tricks such as combo wheelies, highchairs and endos.
The event list for Sunday was the same as last year's, but the prize payouts were much higher in '05, totaling more than $12,000. Riders competed in Longest No-Handed Wheelie, Longest Endo (300-foot approach), Individual Freestyle, Team Freestyle and Sickest Trick. New this year was the Tandem Freestyle event, which attracted 11 teams.
Saturday turned out to be a marathon day of qualifying in order to narrow the field of more than 200 to something manageable for the main event. The better part of Saturday's qualifying sessions were taken up by the Individual Freestyle and No-Handed Wheelie categories, both of which saw nearly 100 riders vying for 15 open main-event spots in both events. Chopping down such a large field was not an easy task, but it was ably judged by founding Starboyz members Scott Caraboolad and Kevin Marino. The emcee for the weekend's festivities was Team X-Treem's Adam Chumita, "assisted" (sometimes not so ably) by hype man Chubbz, who kept the crowd amped up with giveaways from event sponsors Up On One, StuntRagz, Racing 905 and H.A.I. Bike Shop. Cage maker Racing 905 came all the way from Southern California and brought along their welding equipment to repair or replace cages for 905-equipped riders who tweaked theirs throughout the weekend. Props to them.
When the smoke cleared on Sunday it was local hero Kyle Woods who was declared the King of Stuntwars by virtue of winning three events outright (Individual Freestyle, No-Handed Wheelie and Sickest Trick) and also contributing his talents to the first-place StuntRagz team. In Individual Freestyle the always-innovative Woods put together a solid run complete with never-seen-before tricks such as the suislide (locking up the front brake and sliding as far as he could) and no-handed coasters (he shifts into neutral before letting go of the bars). Woods split the $500 Sickest Trick with his tandem partner Nicole Michaud, who hung on for an insane tandem no-handed coaster wheelie.