Tucked away from the Southern California freeway is the Long Beach Marine Stadium, where this weekend 18 wakers were vying for the ugliest $25,000 necklaces ever, X-Games gold medals. Among them, Dallas Friday, who had a train of ESPN camera men following her everywhere short of the Port-a-Potty, hoping to get THE SHOT. She was, after all, the sure thing everyone was banking on. Only 18 riders earn the prestigious (okay, valuable mostly to their sponsors) invites to the X Games. And of those 18, only eight get to ride in the finals, which went down on Saturday Aug. 6, 2005. Of course, Dallas was there. The dudes hit the water first while Dallas relaxed and watched, with the camera men lurking near by. Things on the water were really exciting, since Phillip Soven was attempting to best Danny Harf by doing many of Danny’s tricks. He seemed to be doing pretty well at it, throwing a nuclear whirly 5 in particular, but when he rode up to the double up, hoping to show up Danny by throwing a blind Pete Rose, perhaps his conscious caught up with him. He blew it and threw a total girl trick instead. The only person more upset than Phillip was his dad, who will certainly have some words with the boat driver, X-Games camera men, and the wake about how they screwed him up. Dallas seemed excited as Danny was riding, but, much to the chagrin of the X-Games people, only stomped a 900 (not the 1080 they’d hoped for) on the double up. It was enough to beat Phillip’s score and reclaim gold, and Harf took home the 25k himself. But who cares about the guys. Dallas Friday is the star of this show and she is not one of them. After winning on the online poll by some 70%, Dallas took the water. It wasn’t particularly spectacular, but watching after her after a long day of sitting around, it was slightly more entertaining than the rest of the show. And sure enough, she won, again.