X Games Austin: Austinite Chase Hawk wins BMX park gold

By Dave Doolittle

Editor’s note: This article was originally published June 8, 2014

Austinite Chase Hawk only needed two runs in the BMX park final to take gold on home soil at the Inaugural X Games Austin.

The 27-year-old who has been riding the Ninth Street BMX jumps downtown his entire life, scored an 89.66 on his second run, which the other five competitors couldn’t touch with their third and final runs.

Drew Bezanson of Canada took the silver medal and Californian Daniel Sandoval took bronze.

“Honestly it hasn’t set in yet, really,” Hawk said of the win, his first X Games gold. “But looking up out at the crowd afterwards and just seeing how stoked everybody was, that really hit home to me because more than anything I wanted to prove to my hometown that an Austinite can keep the medal in this city.”