Luke "Duke" Emmons gives you the inside scoop on his winning run at Round 2 of the XDL Sportbike Freestyle Championship in Nashville, TN.

I popped up at 4 a.m. on Saturday morning with an excited, sick feeling in my stomach. My mind was racing in a hundred different directions. Would the drive be worth it this time? Could this be a breakthrough performance? My questions would be answered by 10 o’clock that night and the three hour drive through torrential downpours to Nashville would prove to be the least of my struggles that day.

At 8 a.m. I drifted into the Music City Motorplex in Nashville, Tennessee and headed over to the riders meeting being held by Thomas Evans. XDL events always treat the riders like professionals; the way they deserve to be treated. I grabbed some complimentary breakfast and coffee, then sat down and listened to what Thomas and the riders had to say. My thoughts began to wander towards the ideas that had been sitting idle in the back of my mind. Which run should I use to qualify? Should I take a chance with something super hard and risk a crash, or play it safe with a clean, entertaining performance? In the end, I decided to put together a technical but safe run because a difficult run with a lot of mistakes looks terrible, period.

My decision proved to be correct as I qualified 3rd and was very comfortable to be in that position. I was behind Nick Apex and Bill D. My Excalibur Powersports sponsored F4i was running strong that day. It had never felt so responsive and crisp underneath me. After qualifying, the first event of the day was the circle challenge. Riders are paired with each other and the first one to do ten circles wins. I won the first round of circles only to be defeated by a half circle by Japan’s very own Shin. Andy Niles was the victor in the event, whipping circles faster than anyone I’d seen.

The timed stoppie challenge followed. It tests a rider’s skill on the front tire. A rider must land an endo on a wall, land his rear tire on a spray-painted dot, and roll long enough to hit his helmet on a board held up by a judge. The rider who can complete this the fastest, wins. Bill D. crushes these types of events and easily won. The next event was the sickest trick, which is just as it sounds. This event was crowd-judged and the crowd likes few things better than endos and burnouts. I decided to combine both by parking a stoppie on the race track wall and cracking my throttle wide open. This revved the crowd up like crazy, in turn, making me the victor.

The Individual Freestyle comp was next. The heat and humidity were getting to me, but my mesh Shift jacket was keeping me as cool as possible. I had the advantage of being able to watch twelve of the fifteen riders lay down exceptional runs. I was feeling intimidated to say the least but I throttled the negative thoughts out of my mind.

I decided to duplicate the run that I had used to qualify, since the judges had liked it. This time, I turned the throttle a little harder than I had in qualifying and put it all on the line to claim my very first XDL victory! The top ten riders in this championship can win on any given day... but Saturday, July 26, 2008 proved to be mine. Special thanks to my sponsors; SHIFT, Excalibur Powersports, SMF Cycles, Interbuild Inc., and Amsoil.