Summer X-Games: Who’s taking gold this year?

Mark Pawlak    Adventure Sports & Travel Thoughts     espn, olympics, Skateboarding, tony hawk, winter x games, x games

If you don’t know: the X-Games are the extreme sports World Cup, Olympics, Cup final and Superbowl rolled into one!

This is where skate legend Tony Hawk first pulled off the legendary ’900′ back in 1999 and BMX uber rider Dave Mirra somehow turned a double backflip in 2000.

We just sat in on a press conference with Tony Hawk and friends, and Sandro Dias, one of only a handful of skaters to land a 900 told us he did it at the X-Games the first time he hit the ramp, never even checked it out beforehand: X-Games is where things happen!

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Is the Euro Winter X Games going mainstream?

Mark Pawlak    Adventure Sports & Travel Thoughts     olympics, Skiing, Snowboarding, snowmobiling, winter x games

I guess it depends how you classify mainstream, although it could be argued the Winter X Games has lost some of its X-factor since the Olympics woke up to snowboarding in 1998.

More traditional Olympic disciplines have been around since the year dot (1924 to be exact). Snowboarding, however, is a relatively new sport; the first ever Winter X Games was in 1997, with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) taking snowboarding on its books a year later.

Before then, there was a clear division: regular Olympic sports one side, extreme sports the other. Although, hold on: Since when was luge not extreme? And as for ski-jumping, it’s completely off the richter.

So what does the Winter X Games bring that the Winter Olympics does not? Well, there are eight different competitions, these include Slopestyle, Ski and Snowboard SuperPipe and a demonstration event on snowmobiles – not sure this last one would make it past the IOC selection committee. read more