“I Can’t Believe This!”
X Games Rookie Liam Doran Takes Gold in Rally Car Racing
England’s Liam Doran has been a known commodity on the European Rally Car Circuit for several years and on Saturday at X Games 17, he made a name for himself internationally by weaving through the streets of Downtown Los Angeles winning gold in Rally Car Racing.
“It felt amazing putting it all out there,” an overjoyed Doran said. “I went out and I started winning and when you get on a winning streak you go.”
Doran’s road to victory included defeating defending champion Tanner Foust in the semifinals and knocking off Rally Car legend Marcus Grönholm in the first two races of the best of three finals.
“My team is the best team in the world,” Doran said of the men who crafted his Citroen C4. “The car was the same from the first run to the last run. I owe it to everyone, and I have done it.”
“It was fun,” Grönholm said of his performance. “But the whole day I have not been happy with my driving so that was not so enjoyable.”
In the Bronze medal match, David Higgins defeated Foust easily as Foust’s car broke down just after the start.
“Words cannot describe it,” Higgins said of the racing. “The atmosphere, the whole thing. There is no room for error anywhere with the brick walls and cars and everything. It is probably the most wild thing you can do in a car, but it is brilliant.”
Rally Car Racing features drivers racing modified street legal cars on closed sections of the city streets. The goal in Rally Car Racing is to accumulate the lowest elapsed driving time while racing in two-car, head-to-head heats. The three-quarter mile long Rally course, alongside the concrete cityscape of Los Angeles, includes two sections of raw dirt. In each heat, drivers will complete two laps of the entire course, which must include one traditional Rally Joker lap. The Joker lap forces drivers to launch their car over a 52-foot dirt-to-dirt gap jump. Actual finish order determines advancement throughout the competition.
For X Games media information, including press releases, logos and additional images from past events, log on to www.espneventmedia.com. To view medalist runs, visit the Winter X Games You Tube Channel – https://www.youtube.com/xgames and follow the X Games on Twitter at Twitter.com/xgames
X Games 17
In its ninth year in Los Angeles, X Games 17 will feature more than 200 athletes at competition venues and event spaces including STAPLES Center and Nokia Theatre L.A. LIVE. The 17th annual action sports competition to be held in Los Angeles July 28 – 31 and will debut the new discipline of Enduro X, as well as the first-ever rally street circuit running through the downtown area. ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC will combine to telecast 25 hours of live X Games 17 competition. In addition to the 25 original hours in high definition, the Worldwide Leader in Action Sports will also televise 21 hours of X Games action on ESPN 3D. More than 29 hours will also be distributed on ESPN3.com.
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