Fan support boosts Rochester's Alec Majerus to skateboard final

The nerves Rochester's Alec Majerus felt before his first run in the Street Skateboarding qualifier subsided once he heard cheers for his name.

No competitor had a larger contingent of fans than Majerus, whose two identical scores of 77.66 placed him among 10 competitors who will skate in the Saturday night final.

He gave away all of the 30 tickets he had to family and friends, and he estimated about 50 people who he knew came to support him.

"There's so many kids who just bought tickets and came — like kids from middle school," Majerus said afterward, with a beer that his friend gave him in his hand. "I'm like, 'What? You're here? Sick, man.' "

Normally, Majerus said, he's nervous during his entire run, but the fan support, most of which came from friends who hadn't seen him skate professionally before, made him excited.

Skaters had two runs through the course in the qualifier, and they'll get three in the finals. Majerus, who won an X Games bronze medal in Street Skateboarding in 2014, plans on Saturday to do one of the same runs through the course that he did on Friday. He'll move through it differently for his other two opportunities.

"If I'm going to win any contest, I feel like this is the one because I've got all of my family and friends here supporting me," he said. "So I just feel like I'm getting all the good energy."

Colton Walker of New Richmond, Wis., finished fourth in the BMX Dirt qualifier.

Competitors had two runs through the course, and their higher score determined their finishing place. Walker had scores of 85.33 and 87.33. Scores are based on amplitude, creativity, style, volume of tricks and flow of run.

The BMX Dirt final is at noon Sunday.

Each of the 12 competitors in the BMX Street final had two runs through the course to get one score that could win. So Garrett Reynolds, who had eight X Games gold medals in the event coming into Friday, just wanted to stay on his bike and have a clean first run.

That was enough. His first score, 89.33, was more than two points better than the second-place finisher, Devon Smillie. Scores are based on overall impression of an athlete's run.

In both of his runs, Reynolds cleared the Viking ship in the center of the course with a trick.

"That thing's really fun," Reynolds said. "I've been riding it the whole time. The whole course has been cool. X Games does a really good job every year of tying [in] whatever state or city they do it in."

Reynolds has 10 X Games medals.