Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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P120 its of things that you've never done before. Thank God for foam pits, but you can only do a trick for so long into a foam pit before it's time to prove to yourself that it's time to step up and handle it on dirt. And it's not a guaranteed deal that you ride it away." Eleven weeks ago, Metzger didn't "ride it away." He crashed and crashed hard, suffering a broken femur, a broken hand and a destroyed elbow. "I was filming for On The Pipe 6 out in Reche Canyon and flip- ping this 120-foot dirt jump pretty much all day," Metzger said. "It came down to the end of the day and it was time to go, and I was riding back to toward my truck and all of a sudden I saw Miles Richmond getting ready to hit the jump again, and I just thought to myself, 'Oh, this will be cool to just do a train behind Miles and throw out another backflip.' Well, unfortunately, I was going too fast coming up on his rear wheel so I had to back off on the throttle off the lip and I knew I was going to come up a little short. I didn't think it would be that big of a deal, but the way I landed... it catapulted it off the side of my bike where I was getting dragged in a sidesaddle pull. My feet were getting dragged and then at the very bottom I lost my balance, and it did a low-side slap on my right side. Got my head, shoul- der, elbow and femur... all I could think about was 'Man, it's time to call an ambulance and get to the doctor as fast as I can to slam a rod into my leg so I will be okay.' I didn't know how bad my elbow was, but it turned out to be super bad. That was all she wrote. I was back on the bike three weeks after my surgery; and six weeks after, I was doing trails and then got stronger and stronger. I prob- ably have 30 degrees of move- ment in my elbow, and that will take some time—like any injury." And so the X Games were pos- sible. At least in theory. "I'm only 11 weeks out today from shattering my femur, my right elbow and my hand. I re- ally wanted to do Best Trick this week, but my doctor told me it wouldn't be the wisest decision. I will just do Speed And Style. I'm probably 80 percent. The femur was one thing, but the elbow was disintegrated and pretty much tie-wired back together. There's always next year." As much as he's been involved from the beginning of freestyle, Metzger is hopeful of being just as instrumental in the future of the sport. And the evolution is right around the corner, he says. "I think in the next couple of years, the progression of the mo- torcycle... the guys can only do so much on the machines now because they weren't made for freestyle," Metzger said. "We're riding dirt bikes that were made for motocross racing and then we cut 'em up and make them com- fortable for what we do. If all of a sudden, we are manufacturing what are freestyle-specific dirt bikes, it's going to take freestyle in a whole new direction. That's where I am now in the sport. I just got my hands on a rotor bike from France. It's a Suzuki 250 with a full rotor front end where you can do bar spins, backflip bar spins, tail whips... it's like starting all over again and it's awesome." When he looks back on where he's been and looks forward on where he's going, things always point back to the same thing—his early days of being a kid racing a dirt bike. "I just always liked jumping as a kid," he said. "My dad actu- ally made me do some jumps as a kid and I look back now and think, 'Wow, what was my dad really thinking? He was having his 10-year-old son jump 85-foot jumps that most big bikes weren't doing. I think that's the way I am now. I just love catching air, I love pushing the limits of what I can do and what my motorcycles can do. That's the story in a nutshell. I'm nutty for dirt bikes and just doing what I can do to progress myself and the sport." CN This Archives edition is reprinted from the August 11, 2010, issue of Cycle News. CN has hundreds of past Archives editions in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. So, to prevent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road. -Editor CN III ARCHIVES Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives