A Vernon-based mountain biker and his filmmaker took home an X Games gold medal Thursday.
The X Games “Real MTB” competition returned this year for the second time, after it debuted back in 2021. The unique competition breaks away from the live format of most X Games competitions, and instead sees athletes submit 90-second video clips, filmed and edited by a single videographer.
Judges then pick the most “electrifying” videos, with medals going to both the athlete and the videographer.
After the videos were submitted by five of the best mountain bikers on the planet and published two weeks ago, the judges crowned Vernon athlete Tom van Steenbergen with the gold medal, along with his filmer and editor Calvin Huth.
“This is crazy, to even be a part of the X Games is nuts and to get a gold medal is, I don’t even know. This is nuts, it’s awesome,” van Steenbergen said after he was awarded gold.
“I like to think it’s a big deal for mountain biking for sure, because it’s a different audience. All of the X Games is something we all aspire to growing up and watching the live events … it’s really cool.”
Huth said it was important to capture multiple different kinds of locations and riding in their video, with van Steenbergen riding three different bikes in the video.
“It’s not like mountain biking happens in the one spot, we wanted to show it in all different types of light; in the forest, in the desert,” Huth said. [Van Steenbergen] obviously has the ability to ride any bike anywhere so that makes my job pretty easy.”
The gold medal comes less than three years after van Steenbergen suffered a catastrophic injury during the October 2021 Red Bull Rampage competition in Utah. During one his runs down the notoriously unforgiving mountainside, van Steenbergen landed a backflip awkwardly and went over his handlebars.
He broke both his hip sockets, a femur and a piece of his lower vertebrate. He also separated his shoulder.
But following extensive surgery, van Steenbergen miraculously was back on his bike within a year, competing at Red Bull Rampage in 2022. Last year, just two years after the crash, he took home second place at Rampage, his best finish over his eight events there.
While the X Games judges awarded gold to van Steenbergen and Huth Thursday, fan voting will continue through to June 30.
Photo: X Games
Calvin Huth, left, and Tom van Steenbergen pose with their X Games gold medals.
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