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Ten-year-old Mike Ziegler won a gold medal at ESPN's 1999 Winter X Games, becoming the youngest gold-medallist in X Games history. The event? ESPN Digital Games' X Games Pro Boarder on PlayStation. Ziegler qualified for the competition in December by winning one of eight regional mall tournaments sponsored by Electronic Arts and ESPN. Ziegler had never played X Games Pro Boarder before, but just as in every underdog sports movie played as filler on pay movie channels, he won. He then took his first flight ever to Mt. Crested Butte (joke in there somewhere) to compete against the other qualifiers at the X Games. The eight qualifiers played a tounament, as did eight competing snowboarders, to decide who would face each other head to head. Ziegler systematically destroyed his competition, then pointed to the winner of the snowboarder section, Neal Lyons, and said, "Bring it on, knuckle-dragger."

Lyons was no competition for the gaming juggernaut known as Ziegler. Mike defeated Neal by a score of 9,067 to 6,624, winning the gold medal, the glory, and the girl. Fans went crazy and the credits rolled. Rather than stating his desire to go to a theme park after winning, Mike Ziegler humbly said, "It was a real great experience, I'll always remember it."