Henrik's X games run

casualDude.....Jason Arens is the head judge. The guy you can see shotgunning beers and doing stylish simple tricks in the goodenough edits....you think you've got a more in depth and nuanced understanding of skiing than he does? In the past it's been guys like Steele Spence and Evan Raps....heard of them? The judges are pretty much all former competitors and people that could go hit every feature on the course themselves. These aren't swiss dudes from FIS in technical puffies judging these events.

Competition skiing has ALWAYS been about technical difficulty, amplitude, clean grabs, variety of spin direction, etc. It's the avenue within the sport that allows people with a desire to progress their technical skills to compete against other likeminded skiers. That's all it is. The X games is not a shrine to freeskiing in all its many forms.

There is more content available now than ever for you to watch the kind of skiing that you prefer, it doesn't make sense to go to the slopestyle event at x games expecting to see Adam Delorme wheelieing the knuckles. Instead, you'll see french guys at the top of the half pipe yelling and pounding their fists and kicking their tails on the ground and fidgeting and practicing their pops and rotations and landings while standing still. It is what it is, and it, in my opinion, is very cool in its own right, but it ain't where I go looking when I want to see the freshest, most casual, creative shit that skiing has to offer.

Long story short, judges gon judge, contests gon contest, and there's more ways than ever now to see talented as fuck skiers do cool shit on skis that doesn't involve 3 inversions and 5 switchups, and a zillion pretzels.

PREACH!

Good God. There is so much pissing and moaning here about "style" being left out of competitions. How creativity is suppressed by competition. You know what? That's the nature of the sport.

Judging is a formula. Degree of difficulty & execution are always going to trump creativity, when creativity is not as difficult. I'm sorry, but if a skier that goes disaster 4 on, pretzel 2 out loses to a skier that did a pre-tail, blind 2, I'm going to lose my shit because one is markedly more difficult than the other. Creativity will win when it is guys like Henrik in the Dew Tour that are sending massive gap-transfers to rails like in the Dew Tour. A cork 9 is never going to be a dub 10 is never going to beat a trip 12, grabs and landings equal. That's neither the spirit nor the nature of competition.

Even the chief writers & mods here don't seem to fully understand it. If you don't want to watch, cover, or write about X... then don't go. Don't watch. Don't cover it. I promise you, every time you live stream or watch an event, you're pumping advertising dollars into that event. You want to watch a sport wither into obsolescence? Then ignore it. Cut it off.

That's the reason skiing events were dumped in lieu of a fucking Halo tournament. The organizers of the event full well understand they do not have the support of the core viewer when every contributor or writer on here prefaces their X-Games coverage by writing "fuck X-Games" and every 15-year old in the comments jumps in.

BenWhitPREACH!

Good God. There is so much pissing and moaning here about "style" being left out of competitions. How creativity is suppressed by competition. You know what? That's the nature of the sport.

Judging is a formula. Degree of difficulty & execution are always going to trump creativity, when creativity is not as difficult. I'm sorry, but if a skier that goes disaster 4 on, pretzel 2 out loses to a skier that did a pre-tail, blind 2, I'm going to lose my shit because one is markedly more difficult than the other. Creativity will win when it is guys like Henrik in the Dew Tour that are sending massive gap-transfers to rails like in the Dew Tour. A cork 9 is never going to be a dub 10 is never going to beat a trip 12, grabs and landings equal. That's neither the spirit nor the nature of competition.

Even the chief writers & mods here don't seem to fully understand it. If you don't want to watch, cover, or write about X... then don't go. Don't watch. Don't cover it. I promise you, every time you live stream or watch an event, you're pumping advertising dollars into that event. You want to watch a sport wither into obsolescence? Then ignore it. Cut it off.

That's the reason skiing events were dumped in lieu of a fucking Halo tournament. The organizers of the event full well understand they do not have the support of the core viewer when every contributor or writer on here prefaces their X-Games coverage by writing "fuck X-Games" and every 15-year old in the comments jumps in.

What's the point of writing event recaps if you're contemptuous of contests? There's a lot going on in skiing worthy of writing about, if contests aren't in alignment with what you're into, don't write about them, or at least if you're going to write about them anyway, say for a work obligation......well, skip the paragraph about how lame contests.

casualWhat's the point of writing event recaps if you're contemptuous of contests? There's a lot going on in skiing worthy of writing about, if contests aren't in alignment with what you're into, don't write about them, or at least if you're going to write about them anyway, say for a work obligation......well, skip the paragraph about how lame contests.

We, as a community, are cannibalizing the sport we love.

Perhaps my perception of the X-Games and of competition is different because my view of freeskiing was shaped by a different era. So much of today's members are too young to fully understand and conceptualize the rate at which freeskiing has progressed and how competitions like X-Games and the Dew Tour have been a catalyst for that progression.

It wasn't long ago when TJ Schiller won X-Games Big Air with a swtich 1080 mute grab. It wasn't long ago when the Kangaroo flip was the only double we'd see in competition. It wasn't long ago when a 15 year-old Simon Dumont went head-to-head with Tanner Hall for years, battling for X-Games superpipe Gold. These were the years and the events that launched freeskiing into outer space. The vocal majority on this site are too young and too dumb to revere and conceptualize those time and the astronomical rate at which freeskiing has progressed, in both technical difficulty and popularity, because of platforms like X.

So, consider it a warning shot. A wake up call. If we continue to cannibalize the events that full well have their place in this sport, X-Games will continue to air fucking asian kids playing Halo over the slopestyle finals.

casualDude.....Jason Arens is the head judge. The guy you can see shotgunning beers and doing stylish simple tricks in the goodenough edits....you think you've got a more in depth and nuanced understanding of skiing than he does? In the past it's been guys like Steele Spence and Evan Raps....heard of them? The judges are pretty much all former competitors and people that could go hit every feature on the course themselves. These aren't swiss dudes from FIS in technical puffies judging these events.

Competition skiing has ALWAYS been about technical difficulty, amplitude, clean grabs, variety of spin direction, etc. It's the avenue within the sport that allows people with a desire to progress their technical skills to compete against other likeminded skiers. That's all it is. The X games is not a shrine to freeskiing in all its many forms.

There is more content available now than ever for you to watch the kind of skiing that you prefer, it doesn't make sense to go to the slopestyle event at x games expecting to see Adam Delorme wheelieing the knuckles. Instead, you'll see french guys at the top of the half pipe yelling and pounding their fists and kicking their tails on the ground and fidgeting and practicing their pops and rotations and landings while standing still. It is what it is, and it, in my opinion, is very cool in its own right, but it ain't where I go looking when I want to see the freshest, most casual, creative shit that skiing has to offer.

Long story short, judges gon judge, contests gon contest, and there's more ways than ever now to see talented as fuck skiers do cool shit on skis that doesn't involve 3 inversions and 5 switchups, and a zillion pretzels.

Thank you so much for writing this. People assuming they know who the judges are without actually paying attention, it just hurts my brain.

He is sick in what ever he does and those zero spins were sick don't bash him. And comp skiing sucks anyway so

coleh2001He is sick in what ever he does and those zero spins were sick don't bash him. And comp skiing sucks anyway so

why does comp skiing suck, please

op would love this years big air...

how can I watch this

HENRIK FOR PRESIDENT!!!

I thought his rodeo 180 was pretty sick

KravtZPersonally never been a huge Henrik fan...that being said I love watching his skiing. His Xgames performance was classic Henrik...stylish, awesome looking tricks.

But I just feel like on a stage like X games he needs to throw down a contest contending run. Throwing zero spins is just unacceptable at that level. X is one of the biggest comps...kid needs to step it up. Throw down a run and not be ok with coming in last place

I agree we see too many 30-10 scores at the end of the day.