Lindsey Okubo: You’ve had 25 concussions. I’ve had five concussions in my life – four in three months – so that was like this wild thing, but 25! I don’t know if dementia or the possibility of memory loss ever crosses your mind but it does mine, how you begin to deal with these small realities?
Travis Pastrana: Right? [laughs] Like is this normal? People ask me how many concussions I’ve had and I’m like 20, 30? I don’t remember. My job now is safety, which is a bit shocking, and one of the things we did was to take the guys who’ve had the biggest hits, and myself as well, and we went and got fully tested. It was really cool to find that we were all clear even with the amount of concussions we’ve had and learned a lot to really put back into Nitro Circus’ program as far as protocol. You hear stuff but it was like, how was I supposed to tell a guy who hit his head pretty hard in practice that he can’t ride next week? Not only is it his pay-check but maybe his family had flown in to come see him, and I don’t know, I’m not a doctor.

LO: Do you think this shift also has something to do with you being a dad now?
TP: Yeah, and I felt really bad for my parents when I realised this, but the first time you see your kid get hurt, it’s like you start to think, “Well, this could’ve been prevented.” It’s hard because it doesn’t make a difference to the crowd as far as seeing the guys crash, one way they’re hurt and one way they’re not, but they still see the same trick. It’s hard, business-wise, to explain to the guys paying the bills that we need to invest $500,000 into a landing pad, but it’s cool because our company is run by the riders. A lot of the guys have had really bad injuries along the way, there’s going to be inherent risk with everything we do but if we can make it so the guys can get up more often, so that they’re not as beat up as we are when they’re our age, then that’s what we’re going to do.

Raf Simons Shirt: £250

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