These hip, edgy stars of the X Games hold promise to draw a younger crowd to the 2006 Winter Olympics.
By DAVE SCHEIBER, Times Staff Writer
Published December 4, 2005
[Getty Images]
"The 2002 Olympics showed what snowboarding is all about and brought our sport to the next level," says Ross Powers, performing in the halfpipe this year in Italy.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - They walk into the hotel conference room looking not like a VIP Olympic contingent but as if they have just taken a wrong turn from the nearest punk rock concert.
With a mix of wool hats, flannel and denim, this group looks as if it might be going for the grunge instead of the gold.
But make no mistake: America's snowboarders have become a hot Winter Games commodity by injecting some cool into the competition.
Coupled with other pursuits that offer an extreme, action sports edge - the aerial stunts of freestyle moguls skiing, the Roller Derby-like drama of short-track skating and the harrowing, icy plunge of skeleton racing - Turin 2006 will reflect a youthful sensibility with its more traditional side.
This is not your father's snowmobile.
And it's a far cry from the Grenoble glory days of Jean-Claude Killy, the 1968 alpine hero in the X Olympic Winter Games. For this new athletic crew, the only X that matters can be found in the cultural phenomenon known as the X Games.
On stage, Hannah Teter, 18, sits with a half dozen of her snowboard colleagues at a recent Olympic media event. Sinking casually in her chair, as if she's in high school math class rather than facing 100 journalists, Teter fields a question about what the Olympic snowboard judges look for.
"They look for style and for whoever's throwin' down that day, who's smooth - and whoever just looks really, really ridiculously good-looking," Teter says with a wry smile, weaving in a line from the Ben Stiller movie Zoolander, a cult favorite among the teen-to-20-something set.
The reference is met more by silence than chuckles, and the moderator hurriedly moves to the next question. But the moment illustrates what this breed of Olympic competitors is about.
"We don't put on a mask in a press conference," says Steve Fisher, the 2004 X Games champion. "We are who we are."
And they offer Olympic organizers a golden chance to attract a younger viewing audience that might be turned off by old stalwart events.
"As the federations of the different sports have found out, the X Games are booming. They're absolutely huge," says Bob Condron, director of media services for the United States Olympic Committee. "TV notices. And the IOC (International Olympic Committee) notices."
These days, they're not alone.
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Enter Madison Avenue.
A Visa check card ad airing frequently features three-time X Games snowboard champion Lindsey Jacobellis, a 20-year-old from Vermont with a shot at a medal in a new Olympic event, snowboard cross.
"That event is going to be great for television and for spectators," says Tom Kelly, public relations executive for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association. "It's an event that has multiple participants on the course at the same time, so you have a little bumping and banging. And it's head-to-head competition and has some really good action sports qualities. And particularly with the snowboarders, they're really the modern-day action sports heroes."
Hollywood clearly agrees.
Two days ago, First Descent - a high-action documentary from Universal Pictures - opened nationwide. It tracks the growth of the sport through four generations of stars. Nick Perata, Shawn Farmer, Terje Haakonsen, Shaun White and Teter are dropped by helicopter onto a daunting Alaskan mountaintop, then conquer in spectacular fashion the ultimate snowboarder's course.
The movie trailer proclaims, "Just 20 years ago, it was called the worst sport ever invented" and follows with a quote from Perata: "The ski industry wanted it to fade away, and it wouldn't go away." True enough. The sport - it resembles skiing but on a board and with no poles - has built a huge following of gonzo, free-spirited competitors.
When snowboarding was added as a ski discipline in the 1998 Nagano Games, the athletes who showed up were viewed skeptically, as outsiders.
Condron remembers it well: "They almost came in with a chip on their shoulders, saying they sold out to the Olympics. But then they enjoyed it. They enjoyed the reception they got from the Olympic people, whom they all looked at as coat-and-tie guys. Well, we were all fired up about it. We looked at it as a pretty good partnership, and now they understand the importance of what it means to the 7-year-old in Topeka and how their sport can grow."
Still, at Nagano, the sport got little attention. "We were kind of pushed aside, way up in the mountains," says Ross Powers, 26, who earned a bronze medal in Nagano to win the first Olympic halfpipe medal for the United States. "But at the 2002 Olympics, we had the biggest crowds you'd ever seen. And it was one of the sports to watch in the Olympics."
That was due, in part, to the way the U.S. men dominated in Salt Lake City: Powers won the gold, and Danny Kaas and J.J. Thomas won silver and bronze, completing the first Winter Games sweep since men's figure skating in 1956. "I think the 2002 Olympics showed what snowboarding is all about and brought our sport to the next level," Powers says.
But, Fisher says, one honor remains supreme: "The X Games title is still the most coveted medal, even compared to the Olympics."
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Not all snowboarders fit the renegade mold.
Jacobellis has girl-next-door looks and long, curly blond hair (10 inches of which she donated to Locks of Love for chemotherapy patients). She was nominated as 2004 sportswoman of the year by the Women's Sports Foundation and doesn't like being lumped in as "some grunge kid."
She wants to inspire youngsters to take up snowboarding and credits the X Games with growing the sport. "There's a new generation coming into being," she says. "A lot of kids aren't learning to ski the right away. They're learning to snowboard instead."
The Olympics can only help to expand the audience.
"The Olympics draw such a mainstream crowd, so new people will get to watch us, and the kids who've grown up with the X Games will be watching now, too," says Gretchen Bleiler, an X Games champion from 2003 and 2005.
But the X Factor is more than snowboarding.
Two-time world moguls champion Jeremy Bloom sees the value of appealing to a youthful crowd.
"From a spectator standpoint, especially with the younger demographic in this country," he says, "it's important for the Olympics to continue to have sports like freestyle skiing and snowboarding because of the birth of alternative sports and the interest level in those types of daring sports."
U.S. short-track speed skater Jordan Malone agrees. "I consider it (short track) an action sport," he says. "It's super intense, and it's a dangerous sport, so they don't allow contact. I come from an inline skating background, and they do allow contact there. But I love short track - nothing feels better than to throw a pass on somebody or go through 3 G's on one foot. I know kids love watching it."
And NBC Sports, which televises the Olympics, knows it, too. Mike McCarley, vice president of communications and marketing, says that there are no numbers to track the popularity of individual Olympic sports but that NBC is well-aware of how much the action sports appeal to younger viewers. So get set to see them well-covered in February.
"It's really important to bring in a younger crowd," McCarley says. "One of the major goals of television and advertisers is to reach a certain demographic. You look at why people watch the Olympics and what they identify with. And with some of these winter sports, there are certain elements of speed and danger involved, which are exciting and lend themselves to a younger audience.
"There's snowboarding. But also look at skeleton. It was added in Salt Lake City, and it's something that's appealing because these guys are flying on a sheet of ice an inch below their chin going 80 to 90 miles an hour."
To a new wave of viewers, that's X-cellent, indeed.
