Buyten, Miller are in X Games again

The area will again be well-represented in this year's X Games as Carson City's Matt Buyten and Gardnerville's Dustin Miller will compete in the event.

X Games 11 will be held from Aug. 4-7 in Los Angeles. More than 150 of the world's best action sports athletes will compete in the games.

Buyten, a professional motocross rider, will again compete in the Moto X Step Up event.

Buyten has seen his once-promising freestyle career derailed by a bad right shoulder. However, he's still a Step Up threat and despite had a classic duel with Jeremy McGrath at last year's X Games despite the fact that his shoulder popped out twice during the contest. He earned second, but has also stunned the field when he won the event two years ago in his first X Games.

Step Up pits riders versus gravity as each athlete sits a mere 25 feet from a vertical dirt wall, which is designed to launch the rider vertically up and over a crossbar.

Miller, also a professional motocross rider, will compete in Moto X Best Trick and Freestyle.

Miller is fresh off a third place finish at Winter X Nine, and is no stranger to the podium in the summer either, taking second in Best Trick in 2001. Miller is constantly pushing the limits of trick variations. He received the 2004 Award for Progression from the IFMA and has more than 30 IFMA wins to his credit. Miller has done it all without the backflip and has been trying the trick to no avail for more than two years.

Best Trick allows athletes to go big with one trick to awe the audience and judges. Riders normally chose this discipline to showcase the new tricks that they have been working on throughout the year, making Best Trick the most progressive of the Moto X disciplines in terms of tricks.

Freestyle is performed on a dirt course featuring 45-90 foot gaps off of which riders flip, spin and perform other aerial stunts during their run. This course includes both ramp-to-dirt and dirt-to-dirt jumps.

STAPLES Center will serve host to BMX Freestyle, Moto X and Skateboard. In addition, The Home Depot Center, will host BMX Freestyle and Moto X. Wakeboarding will take place at the Long Beach Marine Stadium, and Surfing will be held in Puerto Escondido, Mexico, regarded as one of the West Coast's premier surfing venues. For more details on competition schedules and locations, please visit www.expn.com .

Fourteen hours of live programming of X Games 11 will be featured on ESPN and ABC. ESPN will also present four late-night highlight programs, starting Aug. 5, resulting in 18 hours of coverage. Also, for the first time, the event will air live on ESPN Deportes, ESPN's 24-hour Spanish-language sports network. Overall, this year's X Games coverage will reach 191 countries and territories in 11 languages worldwide.