So with what seemed like a pretty short build up, the Winter X Games kicked off pretty quickly with superpipe and slopestyle getting everyone’s attention on the slopes. With spectators stopping in the middle of a run in Tignes, much to the annoyance of every middle-class skier that didn’t want to be involved in anything that us ‘whipper-snappers’ get up to, you can imagine that the riding was as jaw-dropping as everyone had expected it to be.

It would take me a decade to properly talk about every event, riders competing in them and everything in between, so I’ll just talk about a few people in particular before you watch all the highlights we have below.
First up – Kevin Rolland. I’m only bringing up the French shredder because, personally, I thought he was pretty much done for the season. He’d be struggling for form after returning from injury and I’d already written him off for the X Games but he definitely surprised! It seems that I shouldn’t have shut off my faith in the Frenchman as he managed to qualify first in the superpipe and also managed to take the bronze medal in the final.

Another notable performance was from Iouri Podladtchikov in the men’s snowboard superpipe finals. If any of you managed to catch it, you’d have seen a ridiculous performance that left me questioning my very existence. A bit dramatic, I agree, but his run was insane. After failing to stomp the landing in the competition, he came to his final run and STOMPED the ‘yolo flip’. All he had to do after that was a clean 540 but he was so amped on what he’d just done that he nailed himself on the next flip and ended up in fourth. Not only that but he was so happy that he threw his helmet, goggle and his board into the crowd! Definitely worth a watch!

So here we go. All the edits from the European Winter X Games 2013 from Tignes.

With the first event of the 2013 global expansions completed, X Games returns to the centre stage in France with X Games Tignes, March 20-22. And as we turn our heads to see what’s going on we’ll soon see that they’ve announced the schedule and a few more riders! Want to know who? Thought so…

Snow: Mark McMorris, Iouri Podladtchikov, Louie Vit, Torstein Horgmo, Kelly Clark, Jamie Anderson, Elena Hight, Torah Bright, Shaun White and rookes Arielle Gold, Yuki Kadono and Max Parrot.

Ski: David Wise, Kevin Rolland, Thomas Krief, Anais Caradeux, Torin Yater-Wallace, Bobby Brown, Tom Wallisch, Nick Goepper, James Woods, Kaya Turski and Maddie Bowman.

All the athletes are here if you want a full list!
http://xgames.tignes.net/en/competitions/athletes-1119.html

The event will feature eight different events for men and women over three days, including Ski and Snowboard SuperPipe and Slopestyle.

Schedule highlights include:
„Monday 18th and Tuesday 19th : training
„Tuesday 19th : X Games Tignes 2013 opening press conference
„Wednesday 20th : Two Women’s finals:
- 1pm – Women’s Ski Slopestyle Final
- 6:30pm – Men’s Snowboard SuperPipe Eliminations
- 8:30pm – Women’s Snowboard SuperPipe Final

Press information February 14th 2013

„Thursday 21st :
- 1pm – Men’s Ski Slopestyle Final
- 6:30pm – Women’s Snowboard SuperPipe Final
- 8:30pm ­‐ Men’s Ski SuperPipe Eliminations
„Friday 22nd : 4 finals
- Men’s (10:30am) and Women’s (1pm) Snowboard Slopestyle Finals
- Men’s (6:30 pm) and Women’s (8 :30pm) Ski SuperPipe Finals

Are you lot ready for it?

Shaun White you sneaky little bugger. You can’t help yourself can you? You announce that you’re going to be at the Winter X Games Europe in Tignes this year and you go and piss off every other rider in the competition! How did he do it? Well, read on and you’ll find out!

The Winter X Games are pretty much the pinnacle of our winter sports world and when it comes to the Winter X Games Europe in Tignes, then we tend to go a little crazy in the office. It’s so close that you can smell it (in distance and not literally smell it of course) and there’s always a mountain of videos on their way in so we get to feed that lot to you as well. But what would the X Games be without controversy? We’ll get to that in a bit though.

First things first! There’s been a lot of practising in the pipe and on the slopestyle course for all the riders. Videos have been flying in left right and centre but they’ve all been skiing ones so you snowboarders out there will have to wait! Here’s some updates from the Atomic team:

Atomic: Euro X Games Training Day – SS

Atomic: Euro X Games Pipe Training

Seems that the slopestyle course has been trimmed down this year after losing the dog leg that slowed the riders down, and the gap between the jumps is a lot shorter as well. With those factors put in place it should make the course pretty competitive when it comes to the crunch. Halfpipes don’t really change much when you’re at the top events around the world so this isn’t going to be much different to other pipes that the riders have taken on but I’ve heard it’s super steep and super icy so we should have some pretty fast runs going on!

But the halfpipe is where the controversy is being held. I did mention that Shaun White may have pissed off the other riders and this is because of a ‘private training session’. There was meant to be a private training session in the pipe for only one rider between 9.30pm and 10.30pm – this was for Shaun but he decided not to turn up. It was under the guise of shooting for his sponsor, GoPro, but with him not turning up at all, the rest of the riders were pretty pissed off with the outcome. There was talk of him not being turning up to the event at all but that rumour has passed.
Our good friends at Snowboarder MBM and Mpora.de have filmed an exclusive interview with Shaun in his chalet and this will be posted up on Mpora tomorrow morning! But for now keep coming back to Mpora for highlights.

The Winter X Games is an even that’s stuck on every snowboarder’s or skiers calendar. It’s placed in the diary of everyone that works in the industry and it’s scribbled onto the hand of every fan out there. We’re no different at Mpora and we’re looking forward to this season’s Winter X Games. So much so that we’re over the moon that the schedule has been announced.

Interested as well? Well, here’s the event list:

THURSDAY, JANUARY 26
10:30 a.m. — 12:30 p.m. Men’s Ski Slopestyle Elimination
1:30 p.m. — 2:30 p.m. Women’s Ski Slopestyle Final
2:30 p.m. — 3:30 p.m. Snowboard Street Final
7:00 p.m. — 8:15 p.m. Snowmobile Freestyle Final
7:45 p.m. — 9:00 p.m. Men’s Ski Slopestyle Final

FRIDAY, JANUARY 27
10:30 a.m. — 12:30 p.m. Men’s Snowboard Slopestyle Elimination
11:30 a.m. — 1:00 p.m. Men’s and Women’s Skier X Qualifying
1:30 p.m. — 2:30 p.m. Women’s Snowboard Slopestyle Final
2:00 p.m. — 3:30 p.m.  Men’s and Women’s Snowboarder X Qualifying
3:30 p.m. — 4:00 p.m. Adaptive Snowboarder X Exhibition
6:30 p.m. — 8:00 p.m. Men’s Ski Superpipe Elimination 
8:30 p.m. — 10:00 p.m. Snowboard Big Air Final
9:00 p.m. — 10:00 p.m. Women’s Snowboard Superpipe Final

SATURDAY, JANUARY 28
9:30 a.m. — 10:20 a.m. Mono Skier X Qualifying
11:00 a.m. — 12:00 p.m. Women’s Ski Superpipe Final
12:30 p.m. — 2:00 p.m. Men’s Ski Superpipe Final
2:00 p.m. — 4:00 p.m. Men’s and Women’s Snowboarder X Final
6:45 p.m. — 9:00 p.m. Ski Big Air Final
7:30 p.m. — 8:30 p.m. Men’s Snowboard Slopestyle Final

SUNDAY, JANUARY 29
12:00 p.m. — 2:00 p.m. Men’s & Women’s Skier X Final
12:15 p.m. — 1:45 p.m. Men’s Snowboard Superpipe Elimination
2:45 p.m. — 4:00 p.m. Mono Skier X Final
7:00 p.m. — 7:45 p.m. Snowmobile Best Trick Final
7:45 p.m. — 9:00 p.m. Men’s Snowboard SuperPipe Final

For the first time the men’s ski slopestyle is going to be under the lights! Also, another first is the men’s ski superpipe finals being in the day. Two things that have never happend but I’m sure that freeskiing is going to be a sport that gets a lot of attention on the road to Sochi 2014.

Clear the diaries people the Winter X Games is coming…

After the debacle I spoke about yesterday with the UCI and their new title sponsor, Rocky Roads, the FIS have managed to make some headlines in the snowboarding world.

Terje Haakonsen wrote an open letter back in January to the FIS about the ruling of the qualification process. He states: “The Olympic system for snowboarding is wrong; preserving the status quo is not an option.” Pretty strong words form the Godfather of snowboarding but would it change anything? We were all hoping that the TTR would have some sort of say in the qualification process and, in a dream world, be able to control how snowboarding is judged in the Olympics.

Turns out that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) chose not to agree with Terje. The International Ski Federation (FIS) will oversee the qualification for snowboarding for Sochi 2014 as they did for Vancouver 2010. Riders and supporters alike were crossing fingers that the TTR would be selected to oversee the process but nothing came of it. Apparently the FIS approached the IOC two months early and received official approval leading us to think that there might be something going on behind the scenes.

Ok, so the Olympics regulations state that qualifications have to come from open competitions whereas the majority of the TTR events are invite only, thus putting a spanner in the works. This was never on the minds of the TTR as they did not want full control of the selection process. It seems that it was never going to be something the IOC and the FIS would have contemplated, and it’s something we’d expected anyway, but it’s never good to feel like a sport isn’t progressing in the way it should or at all.

The TTR released this statement:
“The TTR is greatly disappointed by the recent decisions made by the FIS in their meetings in Korea regarding field size, quotas and the qualification process for Sochi 2014. These decisions were made on an accelerated timeline without taking into account the interests of athletes and the sport of snowboarding. Despite TTR making every effort to work with the FIS both within the Freestyle Snowboard Task Force and independently, the FIS remains unwilling to accept any input regarding the Olympics. TTR however, remains open to future discussion with the FIS and will continue to work toward having an impact on the 2014 Olympics.”

I can’t help but think that the sports we love aren’t run by people who want to progress it in the way it should progress. But then that’s purely my opinion… what do you reckon?

Rider: Louie Vito
Photo: Pablo Azocar

First thing’s first, let’s take a look at slopestyle. Unlike last year, the weather decided that blue skies and sunlight would be better for this year’s comp in Cardrona. As standard it was a best-of-3 format and the girls were up to kill the course first. Kjersti Buaas and Jamie Anderson were the strong contenders after the first run and they stayed there until the podium beckoned them, later to be joined by Jordie Karlinski. Jamie takes the first slopestyle win of the season and with that a foot in the door for yet another title.

For the men’s slopestyle event there were some familiar names in the mix from the off. Mark McMorris and Sebastien Toutant dominated for the Canadian contingent. But with these two never wanting to settle for second it was a hard fought battle up to the wire with Seb finished in second but only by half a point! Completing the trio was Stale Sandbech who was stoked with his finish.

MPORA Action Sports >>

What’s a slopestyle win by Jamie Anderson if it’s not twinned with a win for Kelly Clark in the halfpipe? We’re continuing the battle from last season right into the 2011/2012 season and that’s something we don’t mind one bit! A lot of things seemed similar in the halfpipe with the podium finishing up with the same three as the Winter X Games Europe as Kelly Clark took top spot, followed by Hannah Teter and then Queralt Castellet.

As you’d expect from the men’s competition tens were absolutely everywhere especially in Ryo Aono‘s runs. He threw down back to back tens on his first to beat last year’s winner, Iouri Podladtchikov to the top spot. But the heartache didn’t end there for IPod as he was knocked down to third by twinkle-toed Louie Vito.

More Snowboarding Videos >>

The snow season may have kicked off early but we’re in for a huge wait now because that’s it until December. That being said I think we’re in store for another battle between Kelly Clark and Jamie Anderson, with the guys comp being wide open. Only time will tell…

This is something that has been up in the air for some time now. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) were meant to have come to a decision on this a while ago but kept delaying so they could have more time. That time is now up and their decision has been made. They are to include snowboard AND ski slopestyle into the Winter Olympics when it rolls around to Sochi 2014. Here’s the official word:

The IOC confirmed today the inclusion of ski slopestyle (men and women), snowboard slopestyle (men and women) and snowboard parallel special slalom (men and women) on the sports programme of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi.

The Olympic Programme Commission (OPC) initially proposed the inclusion of the events to the EB in Acapulco in October last year. The OPC studied the proposal of the individual International Sports Federations and, at the request of the EB, compiled a detailed analysis of all candidate events at their respective world championships last winter. The decision was also based on an operational feasibility study undertaken by the organisers of the Sochi 2014 Olympic Games.

This is a huge step forward for winter sports! As the popularity grows with the general public, steps like this will only help with exposure and encourage more people to take up the sport. The BBC are already pushing for a British medal as they look to Jenny Jones and James Woods to claim something but let’s hope they don’t get too carried away like they did with Andy Murray at Wimbledon!

What are your thoughts on this though? With reports of Shaun White saying he wants to add slopestyle to his Olympic schedule, is it a sport that will be dominated by the Flying Tomato or will we see other riders shining through? It definitely opens up the field that’s for sure but is it going to harm different stops on the TTR World Tour? Many questions for a positive subject…