What you missed during the Winter X Games

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Gabriel Christus / ESPN Images

Aspen, CO – January 22, 2015 – Buttermilk Mountain: Hannah Teter during practice for Women’s Snowboard SuperPipe at X Games Aspen 2015 (Photo by Gabriel Christus / ESPN Images)

Ben Grote, Sports Reporter

The Winter X Games took place on Jan. 22 to Jan. 25 in Aspen, Colo. The annual event featured three different sports: snowboarding, skiing and snowmobiling. Each sport contained separate events and competitors were scored based on their performance and the top scorers earned medals for their competition. The four days of competition hosted 19 events in which athletes can win a medal and had a grand total of 28 total events. Over the course of the four days of competition, the world’s greatest winter sport athletes competed for their shot at the prestigious opportunity of achieving a gold medal. On top of the competitions, the event hosted multiple music acts such as Snoop Dogg and Skrillex. Here’s a recap of the event.

 

Thursday, Jan. 22 – The first day of the X Games included three medal-qualifying competitions. Out of the three gold-medal winners, a very notable one was 53-year old Chris Devlin-Young, who won with a huge lead over his younger competitors in the mono skier event. The other events hosted on the first day also included the popular ski slopestyle competitions and had eliminations set up to get the best competitors to compete in the finals for later in the week.

 

Friday, Jan. 23 – Out of the seven events that took place on Friday, there were a total of five medal-qualifying events. However, one of the most exciting events to watch was the snowmobile long jump event, in which Heath Frisby won gold for a long jump of 164’11’’. The rules to the snowmobile longjump truly reflect those rules of the ordinary long-jump event that track-and-field athletes would compete with. Each competitor is given a certain distance as a run-up, and the athletes need to give themselves somewhat of a boost in order to get the farthest distance.

 

Saturday, Jan. 24 – Saturday was a very interesting day due to the fact that it had medal-ranked events for both men’s and women’s slopestyle events. With slopestyle being a huge part of the winter action sport scene, this was not an event that you should not have missed. Nick Goepper took gold for the mens division with an incredible run that featured much of his skiing in a switch-position, meaning he rode down the slope backwards as he approached each feature on the hill. As for the women’s ski slopestyle, Emma Dahlstrom won gold in her division, with a run that included some extremely advanced freestyle skiing. Part of her impressive routine included quick spin-maneuvers onto the hand-rails on the hill. Also, Dahlstrom finished her run with huge 540’s and also implemented grabs along with her spin maneuvers off of the large jumps at the end of the run.

 

Sunday, Jan. 25 – The last day of the X Games included the men’s and women’s snowboard slopestyle competition, both medal-ranked events. There were a grand total of five medal-ranked events on this day. Along with the snowboard slopestyle events, two events that were very exciting to watch was the snowmobile snocross event, and also the snowmobile adaptive snocross event. One of the most notable winners of the entire X Games event, was Tucker Hibbert who won his eighth gold medal in snowcross at the X Games. Hibbert amazed the crowds with his controlled handling of his snowmobile and his incredible talent of making tight turns while maintaining a high speed. Just as exciting to watch was the performance of Mark McMorris, who won gold in men’s slopestyle. The X Games veteran’s run was significantly better than his competitors. A very exciting part of his run was a very fast backside 270 onto the handrail just before performing a very hard spin-maneuver off of one of the large jumps. McMorris had an excellent run and left the viewers very satisfied with ending the last day of the X Games on such a good note.


The Summer X Games will be taking place in Austin, Texas from June 4-7. The summer games will also include a variety of action sport competitions and anyone who had interest in the Winter X Games will also enjoy the summer event.