Thomas Pagès
| Personal information | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Thomas Pagès | ||||||
| Nickname(s) | Tom DJ Pagès T |
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| Nationality | France | ||||||
| Born |
25 March 1985 Nantes, France |
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| Residence |
Seignosse, France Arinsal, Andorra |
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| Occupation | rider | ||||||
| Years active | 2005-present | ||||||
| Height | 5 ft 8 in (1.73 m) | ||||||
| Weight | 65 kg (143 lb) | ||||||
| Other interests | BMX, golf, spud guns, skydive, rallying | ||||||
| Sport | |||||||
| Country | France | ||||||
| Sport |
Freestyle motocross |
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| Event(s) |
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| Team | DC Moto Team | ||||||
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Medal record
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| Updated on 14 June 2015. | |||||||
Tom Pagès (born Thomas Pagès on 25 March 1985 in Nantes, France) is a French rider famous for his unique tricks and his style that mostly excluded backflips for the past few years. The biggest achievements of his career were becoming the champion of the 2013 Red Bull X-Fighters world tour and winning the gold medal at X Games Austin 2015 in the Toyota Moto X QuarterPipe competition for his Bike Flip.
Pagès was born in Nantes, France to parents Geneviève and Olivier as the youngest of three brothers. In the 1990s his parents purchased and renovated a house in the French countryside where they had plenty of space to experiment with all sorts of sports. He rode his first real motorcycle when he was 15 years old, stating that he had his first motorcycle of sorts with 19 months.
Together with his brother Charles he started with BMX racing where they suffered their first fractures of collarbones and knees along with some broken teeth. They soon went on to ride their BMXs in dirt and in order to achieve even higher jumps then switched to motor bikes. They had ridden bikes on tracks before, but only built their first ramp in 2005. Pagès rode at his first freestyle show very soon after his first attempts at La Bosse de Bretagne in July 2005, though he states that his best memories stem from Bercy in 2006. He and his brother had only really been racing on their motocross bikes before receiving their invitation for the event, but showed up on the day being able to perform all the tricks of that time, including the backflip.
In November 2007, Pagès became the first person to land a Double Grab Backflip on dirt, which he repeated at MXWC in April 2008, where he came in second in the Best Trick competition. The same year he and his brother were the first riders to catch frontflips on film and he then went on to be the first person to ever attempt a frontflip in a competition at the Red Bull X-Fighters tour stop in Fort Worth, Texas in June 2009, but backed out in mid-air resulting in a crash from which he stood up immediately.
Later in 2009, Pagès got frustrated with the face of the competition and the constant need to perform backflips, ultimately resulting in him quitting Freestyle Motocross and even selling his bike. In a documentary that was released by Red Bull in 2014, Tom said that he had developed depression during that time and it took the help of a renowned sports psychologist to overcome it and to get back onto a bike.
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