Aitken back riding

When you talk to Mike Aitken, he seems totally normal. When he rides over the tough jumps at Rad Canyon BMX track, he doesn't look to have a problem.

But less than a year ago, Aitken lay in a Pennsylvania hospital bed, in a coma and partially paralyzed. Doctors weren't sure he would live. Medical staff warned his family that if he did survive, the Murray rider would probably never be able to walk again or live a functional life. Aitken's story is one of how a beloved local action star whipsawed from the unbelievable heights to the bottomless depths, and then pulled off what some say is a miracle.

It was Sept. 12 of 2008, the BMX Dirt Finals of the Dew Tour. The parking lot of the Triad Center had been covered with tons of dirt, formed into high pointed jumps like vicious brown teeth. The course was a challenge to the world's best riders, each of whom had qualified to be there. "Mikey" Aitken, a famous freestyle rider known more for his widely viewed BMX videos than for contests, was one of them.

From the moment his name was announced, a deafening roar filled the balmy night air. When he started down the steep ramp to the first dirt jump, the screams grew even louder. As he whirled the bike around, doing trick after trick in the moonlight, it was if the cheers from the crowd kept him buoyant in air, as if gravity didn't apply to him.

"It was the best ride of my life. I never expected it. It was like magic," he said last week, smiling at the memory while he waited for his practice run behind the start gate at South Jordan's Rad Canyon.

Then, nearly one month after that stunning Dew Tour victory, everything in Aitken's life changed. On Oct. 5, he was filming a video at the notoriously difficult Posh Trails in Pennsylvania. He'd been having problems with instability in his shoulder for weeks, and the shoulder had been worked hard during the hours of riding. As was his habit then, Aitken was not wearing a helmet. It was his final trick of the day, a high '360 can can tire grab,' where the rider quickly turns the bike horizontally in a circle, while kicking both legs up on one side of the bike and reaching forward to grab the front tire. But while getting everything back on the bike, Aitken over-rotated, going further than a full circle. He crashed on his head, which took the weight of his body and bike.

He broke his eye socket, cheek and both sides of his jaw. His brain stem was injured and there was bleeding and bruising in his brain. He was in a coma for three weeks. "Everything came back really, really slow. I remember bits and pieces of waking up, but that's it. I couldn't move my right side at all," he said. When he was aware enough to learn from his wife, Trista, what had happened, he began sobbing and apologizing to his family.