James Foster

Raised in Southern California, James Foster got a solid foundation in BMX racing and Motocross at a young age. He made the switch to freestyle BMX in high school and his BMX dreams lead him to live in Greenville, North Carolina, for several years to ride and learn from the likes of Dave Mirra and Ryan Nyquist. Now back in SoCal, James can kill it on any terrain. In 2014, James shocked the BMX world as he walked away from one of the gnarliest dirt events of all time, Dreamline, with a second-place finish. In addition, he has stacked some X Games medals—six in total, two gold—as a double threat in both BMX Dirt and BMX Big Air. Despite his success, James’ approach to the competition may seem a bit odd to most. He doesn’t really practice. Well, physically, at least. James believes in the power of visualization and spends most of his practice time simply riding mellow and envisioning what he wants to do. And, it works. James has been able to pull off the absolute unthinkable during X Games Big Air competition: a barspin to downside triple tailwhip for X Games gold in 2017 and a quadruple downside tailwhip for another gold in 2018. Both tricks were the world’s first. It hasn’t been all pulled tricks and gold medals, though. James had an incredibly hard crash on his final run at X Games Big Air 2019, falling from nearly 30 feet in the air and breaking his hip and femur. Using the same mental strength to visualize his tricks, James has remained focused on his health and progression to battle his way back to the top of the game.