Winter x games articles

In a Winter X Games event called slopestyle , skiers or snowboarders individually choose their own route through a course with many of the same features and obstacle s as Skier-X and Snowboarder-X. But instead of trying to get down the course as fast as possible, they use the features to perform tricks and are judged on how well they perform them.

There are also competitions to see which athlete can perform the best trick or get the most air , or height, off a jump. Travis Rice, who learned to ski near his home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is a snowboarder who competes in slopestyle events. The X Games snowmobiling competitions include Snocross , in which competitors race on snowmobiles around a track with steep jumps and obstacles.

Snocross competitions are held outside the X Games, too, with the world championships held in Falun, Sweden. The Summer X Games is held in a warm environment and includes competitions in skateboarding, BMX biking, motorcycling, rally car racing, and surfing. Skateboarders compete in the half pipe, a hollow semi-circle made of concrete. Athletes skate up and down two opposing ramps and perform tricks when they reach the top.

There is also a competition for the best trick and most air off a jump. In "street" competitions, skateboarders skate around a park of obstacles and perform tricks.

In addition to having an outstanding sports career, Hawk has a successful skateboarding video game series. BMX bikers also compete on a half pipe and a street course. They also perform tricks. Anthony Napolitan of Youngstown, Ohio, for example, landed the first double-front flip on a bicycle at Summer X Games 15 in Motorbike riders have similar events, along with a " supercross " race around a dirt obstacle course with steep jumps.

Travis Pastrana, from Annapolis, Maryland, is one of the top motor sports athletes and competes for Team Puerto Rico in international competitions. Athletes from around the world compete in the X Games. The United States, Europe, and Australia placed first, second, and third. The program promotes recycling and waste reduction. In addition to promoting recycling at events, X Games organizers use biodegradable cups, plates, and napkins. These materials are made from corn and potato waste.

The paper used at the games is made from percent post-consumer waste. At the events, fans who are caught recycling are rewarded with token s that can be used for goods and services.

Photograph by Michael Beswick , My Shot. X is short for extreme, which defines many of the dangerous, risky sports in the competition. X is also the mathematical symbol for the unknown, which X Games fans have come to expect.

X is also the label applied to the generation born between the early s and the early s. When the X Games debuted in , many competitors were members of the last part of Generation X. They have long been regarded as the most prestigious set of contests on the action-sports calendar, and their focus has shifted over time.

The event has mushroomed over the decades into a festival-like gathering that draws more than , fans to Aspen over the weekend. It features live bands, house and street parties. To have any chance of putting on a show this winter, however, ESPN had to pass through a number of health-related regulatory hurdles to ensure county officials they would be running a safe, socially distanced event.

An event that has traditionally drawn more than athletes will probably include about With the institutional acceptance of freestyle, which joined the Olympics in demonstrations in , a new emphasis was introduced to skiing: spectacle. Instead of racing against the clock, freestyle competitors win by scoring the most points through the boldest maneuvers and the most fantastic, perfectly executed tricks.

While the Olympics and the International Ski Federation FIS have traditionally made an effort to minimize the consequences of an error on the course, unfairly earning themselves the reputation of being stodgy, their biggest competitor, the X Games, have pulled in the opposite direction, playing up the gruesome danger and earning their competitions and demonstrations the "coolness" factor — and the viewers, sponsors, and TV money that follow.

The "Extreme Games," later shorted to "X" for the sake of translation and branding, officially launched with the full-throated support of ESPN in , drawing an audience of 38, to watch sports like snowboarding and super-modified shovel racing. A year later, the Olympics gave the nascent competition a boost by bungling its own competitive snowboarding debut; Ross Rebagliati was disqualified in Nagano after winning snowboarding's first gold medal because THC had showed up on his blood test; then he was given his medal back after it was established that marijuana was not on the list of banned substances.

Epitomizing the target audience, snowboarder Danny Davis explained to USA Today : "I didn't really grow up on watching ski racing or anything like that. X Games was my thing to watch during the winter. In an attempt to keep up, the Olympics added ski and snowboard cross the same year; it's an absurd competition that involves competitors racing in a group, demolition derby-style , as athletes crash over rollers, banks, and jumps.

Watching some of the first of such events live in Vancouver in , I didn't know whether to laugh or cover my eyes for fear of witnessing a leg snap as effortlessly as a carbon fiber pole. Indeed, ski cross racer Nik Zoricic, 29, died in in Switzerland after hitting a hard-packed snow wall at the end of the course. Yet in order to stay relevant and attract the young blood, the Olympics has an unenviable task: impressing viewers who would rather tune into competitions that do away with romantic ideals of athleticism in favor of adrenaline-junkie, stitches-inducing extreme sports.

Slopestyle, a terrain park course competition, was added to the Olympics only at the last Games in , although it had been a staple of the X Games since This year, the Olympics are debuting the snowboarding equivalent of skiing's aerials, but with a cooler name: "Big air.

One line the Olympics so far has refused to cross, however, is the "gap jump," where a large open space looms ahead of the landing for a skier or snowboarder to clear. A gap jump in and of itself does nothing to separate a good skier from a mediocre one.

In the case of a skier who does well on the obstacle, they come out the same way no matter what: landing, and moving on. But if the skier does not take the jump well, they don't just tumble down the other side of a snow ramp; they smash into a wall of ice, and plunge down the drop.

With a gap jump — which is featured in the X Games but still banned in the Olympics — the disastrous consequences of failure are the appeal.