Dave Mirra overcame a nose breaking crash early in the day, a generally bum shoulder and some 35 years on planet Earth to beat the odds and reclaim his rightful spot atop the BMX Park elite at the Nike 6.0 BMX Open in Chicago. Perhaps it was a slightly less than perfect charge of current park dominator, Daniel Dhers or the two flat tires suffered by Mike Spinner, but if the fates were intervening, Mirra's run couldn't be questioned. Blasting a huge 360 no-handed backflip, a lofty 540 on the vert wall, a smooth no-handed 360 and even his patented air traffic controller (no-handed 720), Mirra left little doubt that he was the man of the day.

Less likely was the performance of Garrett Reynolds who nailed his second run, highlighted by a barspin to manual to tucked no-hander that gripped the whole crowd, though he really didn't think he was gonna be a podium contender. "Honestly I was super psyched to make it into the finals, seriously I didn't think I was gonna get second place. I never thought I would do this good at contest like this!"

Rounding out the top three was Greenville's Marcus Tooker who provided the crowd with its only bike flip in the competition stirring the audience to cheers and a raucous round of applause.

For Mirra the day almost didn't happen. In the morning he took a bad face-first fall that almost kept him out of the competition, but a message he had given his young daughters pushed him to look past the pain, "I told my daughters Madison and MacKenzie that I was gonna come out here with a good attitude and I was gonna give it my best effort, so I wasn't gonna sit this out no matter what. So now I have something to tell them when I go home."


Nike 6.0 BMX Open Final Results

1. Dave Mirra

2. Garrett Reynolds

3. Marcus Tooker

4. Steve McCann

5. Brandon Dosch

6. Mark Webb

7. Craig Mast

8. Ryan Nyquist

9. Daniel Dhers

10. Dennis Enarson

11. Morgan Wade

12. Mike Spinner