In yesterday's edition of our 36 Day Countdown to the 36th annual Rocky Mountain ATV/MC AMA Amateur National at Loretta Lynn's Ranch, Davey Coombs mentioned a unique and practically unbelievable fact about the event: a week after Travis Pastrana launched dirt bikes and freestyle into the mainstream at the X Games, he was back in the trenches as a racer, an amateur racer, at Loretta's. Of course he won at Loretta's, just like he did at X Games.

This was all normal at the time because that's what Pastrana did. But in the nearly 20 years since (wow!) the world of freestyle and the world of racing have spread far apart. Travis has moved on to totally different things, and just last weekend his Nitro World Games drew a big audience on NBC. These days, he's far from the AMA National circuit, or X Games. He's invented something completely his own!

It now seems crazy to think that Pastrana was a weekly member of the AMA Supercross and Motocross pits. Travis was supposed to be in the battle with Ricky Carmichael and James Stewart. Can you imagine? It was real for a little while.

For this week's The List, we run down some of the big moments for Travis Pastrana, the racer.

The Start

Travis first appears on the scene at Loretta’s in 1990, racing the 51cc stock class, and finishing a lowly 20th via 12-DNF-11 scores. Yeah, not an indicator of what was to come. You know what’s interesting, though? His dad Robert made the race that year, too, qualifying in the 40+ class and finishing 27th overall.

On the map

We covered the 1992 Loretta’s event today, and it was most notable for Kawasaki domination. Behind Team Green’s Nick Wey, though, came Travis in the 85 (7-11) stock class, via 5-3-2 scores. By then he already had Suzuki support, and the best was yet to come.