ASPEN — In an effort to expand the X Games’ global attraction, organizers Thursday 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 Games could expand to three winter and three summer events, or four summer and two winter.
Whistler, British Columbia, was the only city to put in a bid for a winter event. The finalists 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.
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 Co. to extend the current agreement.” He said they are looking to “make a decision in the near term. Not in the next few days but the next couple of weeks.”
Last year, the Winter X Games had a record 114,000 fans come through in the four-day run. In the first year at Buttermilk, the total fan count was 36,000.
“We’re trying to facilitate growth,” said X Games events vice president Chris Stiepock. “We’ve been 11 years here on this mountain and we’ve grown together.”
Brothers Moore. During the snowmobile freestyle, gold-medalist Colten Moore gave the crowd a scare on the first run in the finals. He missed grabbing the seat at the top of the final jump and sailed nearly 100 feet before turning to land on his back and left shoulder. After sliding to a stop, he stumbled to his feet and gave a few fist pumps to the crowd. After his finals-winning run, Moore threw down the Tebowing pose. His older brother, Caleb, crashed on the bottom of the landing on his first run and nearly missed the seat grab at the top of a jump on another run.
Snowy golds? A storm was rolling in late Thursday night, and it was expected to drop at least 4 inches of snow overnight, with more during the day. It could be a snowy finals today. There will be three golds handed out today, including Kelly Clark going for her second consecutive win and fifth consecutive podium finish in snowboard superpipe. The other finals today are women’s snowboard slopestyle and snowboard big air.
Footnotes. Women’s skicross qualifiers today will be without four-time winner Ophelie David of France. She broke her left fibula in training Wednesday. She won gold from 2007-10 and silver last year. … Vermont’s Forest Bailey won the snowboard street finals in the second year the event was contested here.
David Krause, The Denver Post
