This year’s Winter X Games did not disappoint. This thirteenth version of the winter variety was held in snowy Aspen, Colorado for the eight time. We witnessed all the thrills that we have come to expect from the games every weekend before the Super Bowl. Somebody attempted a double backflip on a snowmobile! Somebody jumped off the Big Air ramp on skis and did a double front flip and still had time to pause in the middle to make a “Superman” pose while flying down towards the crowd! Shaun White… well, he was himself. Many things that warranted exclamation points happened. It’s my job to take you through them. After the jump we’ll start on Thursday and we won’t stop ’til we cross that finish line. I’m so stoked.

Thursday started with Men’s Ski SuperPipe. We all know that guys tackle the SuperPipe on snowboards but you might not know that they also do it on skis. The bronze medal went to Simon Dumont (USA) (who you’ll see more from later) and the silver medal went to “the Michael Jordan of Extreme Skiing” Tanner Hall (USA). Hall had won the event each of the last three years as well as having four other golds and three silvers. To show you how rare a threepeat at X-Games is, Hall is the only athlete to ever threepeat anything at Winter X and he’s done it twice. But this year belonged to Xavier Bertoni (FRA) who dropped the run in the video below for the gold.[vodpod id=Groupvideo.2007906&w=425&h=350&fv=]

Next up on the docket was Snowboard Big Air. First of all, you should know that Big Air means really big air. Like an 80 foot gap of air. This event was judged by the fans and the results are therefore a little strange. Only four guys were brave enough to brave the Big Air ramp for this event and one of them (Kevin Pearce {USA}) pulled out, leaving the field down to three until someone convinced Mikkel Bang (NOR) to join the rest of his “Norse Force” buddies (Andreas Wiig and Torstein Horgmo) to compete against Travis Rice (USA). Last year, the order was Horgmo, Pearce, and a tie by Wiig and Rice on the podiums. This time Rice saw his opportunity. As this event works like a tournament, Rice and Horgo faced off in the finals. Rice (Double Backflip Backside 1080) defeated Horgmo (Switch Backside 1260) for the gold by a 78%/22% margin in the voting. The announcers however, found it pertinent to mention that Horgmo’s trick was better and Rice was getting the votes simply because he was American. This isn’t the only time this happened and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them do away with fan voting. Here are the two jumps. First the silver run by Horgmo, then the gold run by Rice. Do you agree with the fans or the judges?[vodpod id=Groupvideo.2007948&w=425&h=350&fv=]

In the other event on Thursday night we had yet another upset. In Snowmobile Speed and Style Levi Lavallee (USA) was upset in the final by Joe Parsons (USA). Lavallee was the reigning gold medalist and was fully expected to repeat until he messed up one of his tricks in the style section. Basically the way this event works is that there are two different tracks on the same course. Each starts and ends at the same place but vary in a very significant way. One is the “Style Track” which consists of many jumps and wider turns while the other is the “Speed Track” which has no jumps, a bunch of sharp turns, and some bumps. The two courses overlap so each rider has to stay their path. The judges score the Style Track performances from 1 to 50 and whoever has a lower score has to cross the finish line by at least the number of points they are down in seconds to win. In this case Parsons scored a 42 while Lavallee netted a 33 and only won by about 5.5 seconds. Therefore, Parsons was the winner. Check out the video of the final.[vodpod id=Groupvideo.2007955&w=425&h=350&fv=]

As we move on to Friday, Women’s Ski SuperPipe hits the scene. Nobody is that excited for this event. Why? No, it’s not that it’s boring (it’s not), it’s just that it isn’t competitive. Sarah Burke (CAN) became the first woman to ever threepeat an event at Winter X. She can cross that off her to do list along with being named one of the 100 Sexiest Women by FHM. The silver went to Jen Hudak (USA) and the bronze went to Jess Cumming (USA). Below is the video of the gold medal run.[vodpod id=Groupvideo.2007992&w=425&h=350&fv=]

Next up? Women’s Snowboard SuperPipe. This is the event where the most famous female athletes compete. Even those who don’t follow the X-Games very much have heard the names Gretchen Bleiler, Torah Bright, Hannah Teter, and Kelly Clark. Gretchen Bleiler was the defending champ and was looking to defend her hometown gold (she’s from Aspen), until her night took a really bad turn. She fell on her first run on a jump she could have landed which should have been a hint she was off. The way this event works though, is that you get three runs and only your best counts so nobody took notice. Her second run didn’t end quite as well as her first. She bit the pipe. Hard. Below is the video, and it’s not pretty.[vodpod id=Groupvideo.2008022&w=425&h=350&fv=]By the way, she was fine except for the fact that the first impact pushed her helmet over her goggles and the second hit smashed the goggles into her skull giving her two black eyes. Needless to say, she didn’t return for her third run. In strange fashion, everybody moved up from last year’s standings. Torah Bright (AUS) took the gold (last year she had silver), Kelly Clark (USA) took silver (last year she had bronze), and Hannah Teter (USA) took bronze last year she had forth). Bright’s gold run (which included a “McTwist”, an inverted jump normally reserved for guys) is below.[vodpod id=Groupvideo.2008043&w=425&h=350&fv=]

Last up on Friday night was the much awaited Snowmobile Next Trick. This first time event was basically four guys (all USA) trying to land the coolest trick they could. The other (more controversial rules) were that if you didn’t ride the trick out you were ineligible for a medal and you must execute the same trick that you called prior to the event and could not change it between your two runs. Some of these rules may need to be changed for next year. Both of the first two riders (Jimmy “Blaze” Fejes and Joe Parsons) could not land the trick they said they would on either run and were disqualified. Then came Dane Ferguson. He landed an off-axis backflip on his first try. Lastly, the most awaited moment of this X-Games happened. Levi Lavallee tried to do a double backflip on his snowmobile. On the plus side, he didn’t die. On the other hand, he didn’t land it either making Ferguson the default winner. Below are two videos the first is the double backflip attempt by Lavallee and the second is Ferguson’s off-axis backflip.[vodpod id=Groupvideo.2008073&w=425&h=350&fv=] [vodpod id=Groupvideo.2008077&w=425&h=350&fv=]

Saturday started off with some Women’s Skiiing Slope Style. For those who aren’t aware, all of the slope style events take place on a big course that goes down the side off the mountain. There are a bunch of rails, balance beams, “butter boxes”, and ramps to do tricks on during the way down. Anna Segal (AUS) ended up winning this one on the first run. Not just her first run, everybody’s first run. The conditions got worse with every competitor and the her run held up despite having obvious flaws. This wasn’t a good one. Grete Eliassen (NOR) took gold, Kaya Turski (CAN) took bronze. Here’s video of the most likely non-deserving gold run by Segal.[vodpod id=Groupvideo.2008362&w=425&h=350&fv=]

After that, they did the exact same event, this time on snowboards. Women’s Snowboard Slope Style is one of those weird events that is held despite anybody being sure who competes in it or what is going on. Very few women are into grinding rails on their way down mountains. For instance, last year the event was won by a first timer who was only 16 years old and this year she isn’t even competing again. This year it was won by Jenny Jones (GBR) who is not a talk show host. Yes, that stands for Great Britain. She grew up as a surfer and still does that in her homeland. Surfing in England? This event is weird. Silver to Spencer O’Brien (CAN) who is somehow not a guy, and bronze to Megan Ginter (USA). Gold run by Jones is below.[vodpod id=Groupvideo.2008408&w=425&h=350&fv=]

Next up was Men’s and Women’s Snowboarder X. This is a Snowboard race down the mountain. It’s not that exciting. These are two of the five events that people don’t generally care about. The others are the Skier X races and SnoCross. The reason is simple: Those events are based entirely on speed and not on fancy tricks. And you know how much we love fancy tricks. For this reason I will just get the winners of these five events out of the way now. Snowboarder X, and SnoCross were on Saturday, Skier X was on Sunday.
Men’s Snowboarder X: Gold – Nate Holland (USA), Silver – Graham Watanabe (USA), Bronze – Stian Sivertzen (NOR)
Women’s Snowboarder X: Gold – Lindsey Jacobellis (USA), Silver – Helene Olafsen (NOR), Bronze – Sandra Frei (SUI)
SnoCross: Gold – Tucker Hibbert (USA), Silver – Robbie Malinoski (CAN), Bronze – Dan Ebert (USA)
Men’s Skier X: Gold – Stanley Hayer (CAN), Silver – Hiroomi Takizawa (JPN), Bronze – Andreas Steffen (SUI)
Women’s Skier X: Gold – Ophelie David (FRA), Silver – Magdalena Jonsson (SWE), Bronze – Sasa Faric (SLO)

The big event of Saturday was the Men’s Snowboard Slope Style. In a strange twist, the preliminaries the day before were done during a foggy blizzard. Nobody could see anything and everybody was crashing. This led to Shaun White (USA), or as you may know him, “The Flying Tomato”, almost missing the finals entirely. Luckily for him, he was able to downgrade all of his tricks and grab the last spot in the finals on his last run. With the scores wiped clean, Shaun White threw down. His run was beauty and scored a 96 out of 100. I beg you to watch the clip below, he’s just that awesome. Silver went to Scotty Lago (USA) and bronze went to Mikkel Bang (NOR).[vodpod id=Groupvideo.2008468&w=425&h=350&fv=]

Last but not least came Skiing Big Air. Much like the snowboard event, it has only four guys who can brave it. The match-up in the finals was Simon Dumont (USA) versus Jon Olsson (SWE) after Dumont defeated PK Hunder (NOR) and Olsson defeated Jacob Wester (SWE). It should be noted that Jon Olsson preformed increasingly difficult versions of his own trick every time off the ramp. By his trick I mean that he invented it and it is called “The Olsson Flip”. It’s basically 2 flips and at least 2.5 spins. He kept increasing difficulty by landing backwards, taking off backwards, or adding a extra .5 rotation, or any combination of those three. Dumont ended up winning as the event was judged by fans in another occurrence of the announcers disagreeing. In this case, it may have been less the fact that Dumont was American and more the coolness of his trick combined with showmanship. He won it on a double front flip where he paused in the middle and fully extended into a “Superman” pose before tacking for the second flip and landing. I have to admit, it was pretty friggin’ cool. Check out the video of the two final jumps below.[vodpod id=Groupvideo.2008510&w=425&h=350&fv=]

Sunday arrived on scene promptly followed by some snowy weather. The big daytime event was Men’s Skiing Slope Style. There were some great runs thrown down on the slope but none greater than that of TJ Shiller (CAN) who took home the gold. A good percentage of the men tried to cross the canyon gap as Shaun White was able to do in the snowboard event making it a great watch. The silver went to Sammy Carlson (USA) and the bronze to Colby West (USA). The gold medal run is in the video below and is quite a bit on the awesome side.[vodpod id=Groupvideo.2011279&w=425&h=350&fv=]

Nighttime rolls around and there are just two events left in this incarnation of the X Games. First comes Snowmobile Freestyle. Basically, there are a five different places to jump your sled and you have 1:15 to do so as many times as you want, however you want. The judges judge on a bunch of different factors including variance, quality, and number of jumps. This starts out as a huge rotation until a final four is determined. Those final four were determined to be Justin Hoyer (USA), Joe Parsons (USA), Heath Frisby (USA), and Daniel Bodin (USA). Levi Lavallee (USA) was the last man out (despite a great 2nd run that the announcers thought should have landed him in the final four) after his 3rd run resulted in a crash that looks worse than it was. Overall, Lavallee, who was expected to dominate the snowmobile events had disappointing results (upset in Speed and Style by Parsons and settled for Silver, crashed the double backflip in Next Trick leading to no medal, 4th in SnoCross, 5th and out of the finals here). The announcers chalked this up to him focusing so much on landing the jump in Next Trick. He’ll be back next year with a vengeance. In the semis, Parsons knocked of Frisby (his best friend) and Hoyer beat Bodin. In an incredible final, Pasons took home his second gold after finishing with the “Frisby Air” (named after his best friend and bronze medalist, Heath Frisby), a trick where the rider leaves the snowmobile during the jump and pulls himself back towards the seat while doing a 180 and landing the sled while sitting backwards. Completely normal video is below.

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Last but not least is the Men’s Snowboard SuperPipe. Shaun White (USA) was attempting to break the “SuperPipe Curse” which states that no person can win back to back SuperPipe medals. That was true the first 23 times, but no longer. The Flying Tomato was able to keep his streak alive by taking home gold in both the slope and the pipe every three years. After he qualified in the #1 position, he knew he would have last crack at it. But on his first two runs, White made uncharacteristic mistakes. It all came down to the final run of the final contender in the final event as White soared past Kevin Pearce (USA) to win the gold. The trick that did it was most likely the first hit when White went with a backside alley-oop rodeo 540 at about 19″6 off the pipe. All the other riders that went that big did it with much smaller tricks. Pearce was said all along to have the best chance but just didn’t have enough in the end. The bronze went to Antti Autti (FIN) who put up a valiant effort but was unable to reclaim the gold White took from him the year before. White’s gold medal run is below.[vodpod id=Groupvideo.2011489&w=425&h=350&fv=]

I hope that everybody enjoyed this round of Winter X. Even if you didn’t watch it, these clips will give you a taste of what went down in Aspen. For the record though, my top five moments of Winter X 13.
5. Shaun White’s awesome run to win Snowboard Slope Style.
4. Simon Dumont landing off the money booter in Skiing Slope Style with one ski.
3. Simon Dumont’s double front flip with Superman extension to win Skiing Big Air.
2. Levi Lavallee trying the double backflip in the Snowmobile Next Trick.
1. Shaun White coming from behind to take gold in Snowboard SuperPipe.

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