ASPEN — In an effort to expand the X Games’ global attraction, organizers today announced nine cities as finalists for venues to hold the games starting in 2013.
ESPN, which runs the X Games, will add three venues, but the balance has not been set. The X Game could expand to three winter and three summer events, or four summer and two winter.
This week in Aspen, there are 215 athletes from 25 countries competing.
Whistler, British Columbia, was the only city to put in a bid for a winter event. The finalist for a summer event are: Barcelona; Munich; Lisbon, Portugal; Quintana Roo, Mexico; Santiago, Chile; and the Brazilian cities of Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Foz do Iguacu.
The winning cities will be named in early April said Scott Guglielmino, ESPN’s senior vice president of the X Games. Each city will have a three-year run.
“We want to build off the X Games brand,” Guglielmino said. “We think we have a tremendous property and our objective is to grow that globally.”
Winter X moved to Aspen in 2002, and the current contract runs out after this weekend. Negotiations continue for a new Aspen contract, but a deal is not expect to be announced before these games end.
Guglielmino said ESPN “continues to work with Aspen Ski Company to extend the current agreement.” He said they are looking to “make a decision in the near term. Not the next few days but the next couple of weeks.”
The Winter X Games started in 1997 and expanded to France with an event 2010. The Summer X Games started in 1995 and have been in Los Angeles for the past nine years.
First gold to …
Canada’s Kaya Turski went from third to first with a 95-point run on her final chance to win the women’s ski slopestyle, the first event final of this year’s X Games. It is her third consecutive gold in slopestyle. Teenager Devin Logan of Vermont was second.
“I’ve never seen the level so high as I’ve seen it today,” Turski said. “Everyone is taking training seriously. … It’s going to be a crazy couple of years.”
Slopestyle will be an Olympic sport in the 2014 Sochi Games.
