Photo Gallery: FMX Gladiators in Rome - Dirt Rider Magazine

Freestyle motocross is always a breathtaking sport to photograph, especially if you've never seen it live and in person before. This was the case with Matteo Malvino, an enterprising photographer from Italy who attended the final round of the Red Bull X-Fighters tour with the sole mission of grabbing some cool images for Dirt Rider. Normally a music photographer, Matteo nailed his first FMX shoot, so much so that we decided to assemble some of his best shots in the following gallery. Here's an inside scoop-as well as a handful of amazing images-from our sharpshooting Italian friend. Enjoy!"I usually make pictures at rock stars in my work of live photographer, but what happened in Rome in October was not so far away. I'm talking about the final of Red Bull X-Fighters 2010, the most important freestyle motocross competition in the world.25,000 people in the Stadio Flaminio welcome the rock stars of FMX with a lot of noise and enthusiasm at every jump, like a rock 'n roll show every trick was like a guitar solo."But that wasn't the only attraction of the night: X-Fighters was a great show with a lot of situation like a fight betwen the pilots and "almost real" Roman Gladiators, an off-road Formula 1 car driven by pro David Coulthard, and some funny modified Carabinieri (italian police) cars running along the circuit.?At the end the duel for the overall World Tour title see the American Nate Adams victorious over the main contender Andre Villa. The winner of the Rome edition was indeed the Spanish Dani Torres, author of some crazy combo-tricks during the night."