This past weekend, the World played witness to the bar being raised on the snow and ice of Aspen’s annual Winter X Games. Between snowboarding and snowmobiling, we were glued to the couch to see how far these guys, and girls can push their sports. It wasn’t long ago that a 1080 (with no grabs!) was a sure shot to podium at a snowboard big air event, and now that would be considered old school. With Shaun White left out of the scene baby’ing his ankle, it left the door open for Burton pro Mark McMorris from Regina (whoop whoop!) to nice up the slopestyle. Having triple corked to gold in the big air the night before, he repeated that on the burley freestyle layout to take the top spot. “I’m just out here having fun with my friends” is what he had to say following his win, which we believe to be the beauty of snowboarding in the first place.
Without boring you here, we also witnessed the “Flying Tomato” squash everyone with a perfect 100 score to cap off the games. That was Shaun White’s 5th consecutive gold in that event, leaving him on his own pretty much, especially wearing those crazy print on pants! A Justin Hoyer double backflip attempt on a sled was watched closely by Levi Lavalee on the mic, who had every bit of respect for him to try it, yet ending up nose diving into the landing leaving him in a world of hurt. Ending off the snowmobile best trick was Monster Energy/Skidoo pro, Heath Frisby pulling off a perfect frontflip on his sled. These were just some of the memorable firsts that played in between an onslaught of hot West 49 branded commercials from Thunder Trucks, DC, Vans and all the other brands out there that support this energy drink driven, triple cork world of the Winter X games. With a deep respect for this talented community of athletes, we watched on as a tribute to the late Sarah Burke unfolded with her friends walking the flatbottom of the super pipe into the night. Her smile and charisma touched us all, especially at Platinum Club 1 in Whistler as she presented an award and lit up the room. A lot of inspiring entertainment indeed, leaving us with one thing to do, which is to go make the most of what’s left of winter!
