The start of winter can only mean one thing: four days of blood-pumping, exhilarating flips, tricks, passion and a whole heck of a lot of snow are in store for excited viewers.
That’s right. The Winter X Games return to Aspen, Colo., in January. And with them come some of the best athletes in the fields of snowboarding, skiing
and snowmobiling.
It may seem odd to host a winter spectacle like this just two weeks before the Winter Olympics kick off in Sochi, Russia. However, the X Games add a different sort of flair to its limited roster of events that make it that much more exciting.
Although only three major disciplines are in play in Aspen, there’re actually quite a bit of variety within those three. Slopestyle is a downhill race featuring jumps, rails and general craziness. Superpipe and Big Air, are headliners of the snowboard and ski sections, with snowmobiles featuring freestyle, speed and style in a race where both tricks and time come into play. And Snocross is a rally car-style race.
Each event provides its own level of excitement, largely due to their general unpredictability. You never know what kind of crazy new trick an athlete will pull out or who the next star to come out of nowhere will be.
While the Olympics bring excitement and pride for every competing country, the X Games are focused on the athletes’ individual accomplishments. These athletes come from across the world to win gold medals, but also just to have a great time, spending a weekend shredding some snow with a bunch of other cool dudes and ladies who are having just as much fun shredding.
Interestingly enough, the only real overlapping event — snowboard Superpipe/Half-pipe — didn’t exist as an Olympic sport until after the second edition of the Winter X Games in 1998. And starting in Sochi, Slopestyle for both snowboarding and skiing will become Olympic events. Coincidence? Possibly, but it stands to reason that without the X Games, these kinds of events, if they still existed, wouldn’t generate nearly the excitement that they generally do. You can thank X Games creator ESPN for that one.
One of the best parts of the X Games has to be the emergence of sporting stars out of nowhere. Take, for example, snowboarder extraordinaire Shaun White, known as “the Flying Tomato” for his red hair and big air. At just 27, White is a transcendent athlete in the action sports world and the sports world in general, having won gold or silver in either Superpipe or Slopestyle, sometimes both, at every single X Games since his debut in 2002. His amazing success propelled him into the international spotlight, and his triumphs in Aspen have translated to the Olympic world as well, snagging gold in snowboard Superpipe in both 2006 in Turin and 2010 in Vancouver, while setting scoring records both times. He might have topped that in 2012, as he took to Aspen’s Superpipe and racked up a perfect score of 100
in a quite sensational run that looked almost effortless.
Could we see more of the same come January? You’ll just have to tune in to find out. I know I will.
