Xtreme Games ’06Aspen, Colorado via Rutland, Vermont
Most years the X Games are the pinnacle of televised snowboarding competition. But this is not most years. This is an Olympic year. And since Yobeat’s budget doesn’t allow us to travel to Aspen and Torino, and since we’re banned from the X Games anyway, we opted to crank up the DVR and watch all the action unfold on TV this year. Oh yeah, and we’ll likely watch the Olympics the same way, since cable is cheaper and easier than flying to Italy. So after Sal gave the run down and Jamo and GT nearly gave themselves hernias from announcing the NBA line ups, but before any action, it was time for a commercial break. Now if you’ve ever dealt with ESPN, you’d know the X Games has a “very small budget.” You know why? Because they only have 6 sponsors: Mt. Dew, Playstation, Jeep, Shaving Cream, Taco Bell and the Army. And since I was so excited about watching Winter X, I couldn’t even wait for it to record and fast forward through the ads, so I will break those down for you as well.
Anyway, the ’06 Winter X Games were dealt a bit of a blow by the Olympics. As the producers and staff excitedly watched their roster go from normal snowboard dudes to “Olympic team members” it looked like things were gearing up for a great show. That is until in practice the “Olympians” started dropping out for reason ranging from a stubbed toe to a skinned knee—saving themselves for the Olympics. Like when the action started on the boardercross course. The French team hadn’t even shown up (including defending gold medalist Xavier de la Rue) and golden girl Lindsey Jacobellis was opting against going for the four peat, which was pretty much the only thing making boardercross exciting. The crashes were minimal, no one was seriously injured, and for the 17th year in a row, Seth Wescott didn’t win. Instead, Nate Holland took gold and will be gloating about it for the next 5 or so years. In the girls race, well, there was actually a little more excitement ‘cause Lindsey dropped out, and some Canadian girl won instead. Woo. More importantly, my favorite advertisements had to be for the PSP. They were line drawings of various creatures entertaining themselves with inanimate objects. For example there was a squirrel playing “nut.” Another squirrel begged him to come outside but he was like, no, “I’m playing nut.” And the other squirrel was like, “But there’s a nut you can take outside now.” Brilliant. Ok, more snowboarding.
While all the boardercrossing was going on, the women were riding the slopestyle course. Now ESPN may be clueless about extreme sports in general, but even they have figured out women’s slopestyle is a yawn fest. So they showed 3 runs on TV, both of Janna Meyen’s and one of Hana Beaman’s. Hana’s run was super stylish, but her score was trampled when Janna landed her run on the big side of the course that included a cab 7. In yo’face. By watching the X Games I learned that Mt Dew now makes “energy soda.” While this is quite possibly the most dangerous substance in existence, its commercials were well, kinda cute. They featured nocturnal animals in night vision singing classic 80s songs about nighttime. Good Stuff. A few repeats of this ad later, the men’s slopestyle came on. Shaun White won again. Big surprise. But Travis Rice attempted his new move, a double rodeo on the last jump. Unfortunately the jump wasn’t extreme enough for Travis (who is way more extreme than Shaun if you were wondering) and so he bailed and the Tomato won some more money.
I was so psyched I kept watching and got to see the Taco Bell add where the dude has a pimped out car (but is totally a dork) and some kids are stoked on it. Then they get even more stoked when he has a crunch wrap supreme—every unhealthy item taco bell makes wrapped up in one tortilla and grilled. Sweet. On Sunday women’s halfpipe scored some extra TV time thanks to an untimely storm and the cancellation of motocross. I’ll let you in on a little secret here. ESPN also knows that women’s pipe is a bit redundant to watch so they planned to have another event going on simultaneously that they could show anytime time a girl who could barely make it over the lip was going. But that other event got cancelled, treating viewers to all 20 runs of the women’s halfpipe final. And to make matters worse, Hannah Teter and Gretchen Bleiler had dropped out to save themselves for the Olympics. So the pipe was the Kelly Clark show, but at least it was easy to predict the winner. If you needed something to bet on, you could pick which military ad was going to run that break. There were several different versions of Army commercials-- some for the Navy and some for the National Guard, etc. Whatever, you’re all going to the same place. These ads are mostly stupid, but clearly appropriate for the young impressionable X Games audience who will have no where to turn when their snowboard careers don’t pan out.
Back in the pipe, the next night, the Men had started riding. Men’s pipe is a bit more of a spectacle so it garners two nights of coverage. There were a bunch of runs and tricks and stuff, but the important thing is that Shaun White qualified. He had to do it in his second run and it was a real nail biter, let me tell you, but since the kid is retarded good all he had to do was not fall and he made it. Mason Aguirre qualified first, and even though he is on the Olympic team, ESPN didn’t think to put him high enough in the order that his run would be after the broadcast started so they had to do a replay of his best run. But I guess that’s the danger of a live event, right? For the real show, the super final, it was another night of anxious, fitful sleep for me. But luckily I had the Jeep ads to give me peaceful serene dreams. Between the one where they are on the top of a picturesque mountain, watching it both live and on the DVD screen and the one where they are driving underwater and there are fish swimming around, I felt calm and wonderful. When the men’s super finally got rolling, things were set up to be big. Shaun White hadn’t qualified first. There would be no victory laps for him. But there was one problem: the pipe was damn icy. Several riders were having serious issues with the icy pipe, among them Danny Kass. Now you would think Danny would be used to icy pipes, but it seems all those years at Mammoth have made him soft and he fell on all three of his runs. As for the rest of the field, they threw lots of 1080s, some of them didn’t look like wakeboard tricks (that’s hucked for those who don’t know about wakeboarding), but most of them did. Shaun White did three in one run and totally won the whole contest. He’ll totally get 40 grand and a Jeep for his efforts and the world make sense again. And Shaun, if you read this, I wasn’t making fun of you at all and I totally want to get driven underwater and to the top of a picturesque mountain in either (or both) of your new Jeeps. -BG
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