Top Five Fridays: September 27, 2024
We caught some big news coming to us by way of the X Games this week, as the event hosts its final season before becoming the “X Games League.” More on that below! Image: X Games on Facebook
#1:The X Games and the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Team Announce the Debut of a New Collaborative Street Style Event:
This season, Street Style events are solidifying their role in the X Games, with full inclusion at the Games themselves, as well as an additional collaborative event with the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Team being added to the schedule. Image: X Games on Facebook
Hello, and welcome to Top Five Fridays, the September 27, 2024 edition! Before jumping into the news this week, we want to take a quick moment to congratulate the one and only Jeff Neagle on successfully marrying his beautiful wife Megan last weekend! While we’re quite sure you all know who Jeff is, you might be interested to know that Megan is an equally impressive skier, and is featured in a number of the lead images from this year’s Ski Test! As you might guess, that led to an amazingly fun wedding, chock full of skiers from the area, all eating tacos and celebrating two amazing people on a Vermont golf course on the perfect Autumn evening. It was truly a special night for all of us in attendance, and we want to send a huge congratulations out to Jeff and Megan!
Now that that little piece of housekeeping is out of the way, let’s talk about the biggest piece of news coming out this week: the X Games has announced the official dates for the upcoming games at Aspen, and along with it, also announced a new collaborative event with the U.S. Ski and Snowboard team. At first glance, this news might come across as business as usual, but there’s actually quite a bit more to this story than meets the eye.
First things first, it’s just been confirmed that the X Games will in fact be returning to Aspen - the longtime home of the games. While it doesn’t necessarily come as a surprise, the contract between the resort and the organization expired after last year’s games, at the very least opening the door to a possible relocation. With the X Games announcing a change in direction last summer, evolving into the X Games League, it would’ve been the perfect time for it to relocate to a new home. But, in the end, the successful multi-decade partnership was too strong to break up and the games are officially set to return, from January 23-25th. While this year’s iteration of the games will be the last before the transformation into a league format, the schedule of events feels like something of an appetizer as for the first time in as long as we can remember, the games will be comprised of the same five events, spread evenly across men’s and women’s, skiing and snowboarding categories. In other words, as far as we can tell, all four categories will compete in Superpipe, Slopestyle, Big Air, Knuckle Huck, and Street Style. In previous iterations, events like Knuckle Huck and Street Style felt a bit more exclusive, with women not competing in Knuckle Huck and skiers not competing in Street Style events (but competing in SLVSH instead in last year’s case). That “looseness” is being tightened up this time around as the organization begins to hone in on its new format.
Speaking of Street Style, that brings us to the second major aspect of this announcement: the X Games and the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Team have officially announced their first collaborative event. This year, the Toyota U.S. Grand Prix, scheduled to take place at Copper Mountain on December 20th and 21st, will also act as an X Games qualifying event for two disciplines: Street Style and Halfpipe. Nested within that sentence are two more stories.
First, for the first time ever, the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Team will be hosting a Street Style event. This is noteworthy because, while not a recognized FIS sport, Street Style is trending towards becoming something of a counterpart to Big Air events. That is, if a Slopestyle event is meant to showcase both a rider’s air and rail skills, and a big air event aims to focus solely on their air abilities, then the Street Style event serves to complement the two by specifically highlighting a rider’s rail skills. When you think about the bigger picture here, and the X Games’s move to a league format, it makes sense to add this additional category to fill out the schedule of events.
Second, this also marks the first effort to tie the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Team and the XGL’s efforts together. When news of the XGL broke over the summer, there was immediate concern regarding how this would impact a rider’s commitments and competition schedule. Those concerns were alleviated when it was announced that the league and the USST were entering a partnership to address this. Now, we have at least an idea of how they plan to structure the agreement: by using USST events as qualifiers for XGL events. While we still have questions regarding the draft format initially announced by the XGL, this at least brings some clarity to how the USST can help create a pipeline for talent to make a splash on the global level. All in all, this week's news, while seemingly subtle, is actually very exciting for fans of freeskiing. To learn more, check out the press release shared by the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Team.
#2: With the Rise of the X Games League and The Snow League, The Dew Tour Silently Calls it Quits:
For roughly two decades, the Dew Tour was a mainstay of action sports. Now, with the upcoming formation of the XGL and Snow Leagues, the event has gone silently into the night. Image: The Platfrm on Facebook
In a lot of ways, our next highlight this week feels like a continuation of our first highlight, as for as much excitement as there is around the X Games League, there’s been some substantial fallout for one of its biggest competitors: the Dew Tour. When news broke this week that Copper would be hosting the first USST Street Style event, it led to reporters from the Summit Daily checking Copper’s events calendar, and ultimately noticing the complete absence of the Dew Tour. As a result, they reached out to Dew Tour representatives who confirmed that, “There will not be a Dew Tour event in 2025.” While neither the XGL or Sean White’s new Snow League were specifically mentioned in the Summit Daily’s report, Dew Tour representatives were quoted as saying, “with the ever-evolving nature of sports and culture, change brings fresh opportunities for growth, excitement and focus. This transition opens up different avenues for connection, celebration and energizing refreshment.”
Although not entirely unexpected, the way this news is breaking is a bit surprising. Rather than make an official, public announcement regarding the at least temporary end of the Dew Tour, the company is opting to pull something of an Irish Exit. That is, they simply left the building without telling anyone. When researching this topic, we attempted to find a press release on the Dew Tour website, or via their Facebook, only to discover that the website has been scrubbed from the internet and their social media accounts have been rebranded to “The Platfrm”. Without diving too deeply into this rabbit hole, we can confirm that The Platfrm is a skateboarding content website, supported by Rockstar Energy, who is also owned by Mountain Dew’s parent company, Pepsi Co. In other words, what appears to have happened is this: the X Games announced their XGL plans, Sean White announced his league, the USST announced a partnership with the XGL, and Pepsi Co. said, “welp, I guess this is our sign to leave. Rockstar, we’re giving you the keys to our action sports marketing programs.” The outcome? All that’s left of the Dew Tour is over two decades of memories. To learn more about this sneaky story, check out the report from Summit Daily.
#3: Updates From Mt. Bachelor Community Inc., the Local Organization Hoping to Buy the Mountain:
While it remains a longshot, the local effort to buy Mt. Bachelor continues to hit new milestones, making the movement more powerful by the day. Image: Mt. Bachelor Community Inc. Official Website
Ok, moving on from competitive freeskiing news this week, we want to take a minute to bring you up to speed on the latest developments from Mt. Bachelor, where the local effort to buy the resort is gaining momentum. Before we dive all the way in, let’s do a lightning quick recap to make sure everyone’s up to speed. Just over a month ago, at the end of August, news broke that POWDR Corp had sold Killington Resort, while also indicating plans to sell a handful of its other ski resort properties. The crown jewel of that list is Mt. Bachelor, whose unique panoramic volcano-based terrain makes it a highly desirable resort for a variety of owners. Despite the mountain likely being in high demand and capable of fetching top dollar, a group of locals has quickly coalesced in an effort to purchase the resort and return it to independence. While that concept might’ve seemed like a pipedream even just a few years ago, it’s helpful to note that Killington was purchased from POWDR by a duo of local business owners and has itself become an independent resort once again. In other words, there’s very recent precedent of something like this happening.
Keeping all of that in mind, we thought now would be a good time to check in the latest from that organized effort as some promising progress has been made. Shortly after announcing its formation, the group looking to keep the resort local very quickly formed an organization called Mt. Bachelor Community Inc., and created a website to unify supporters around the cause and to lay out arguments for keeping the resort locally owned. From there, the group launched a GoFundMe campaign which has raised $36,737 as of the time of this writing. While the group, which incorporated itself as B-Corp, hopes to spearhead the purchasing of the resort, the GoFundMe effort is meant to pay for the organization’s overhead as it continues to promote its cause.
Beyond this grassroots support though, things also appear to be gaining traction at both a financial and political level. Just over a week ago, it was announced that the Bend City Council had invited the group to share its progress at their meeting this past Wednesday. While the Council isn’t in the position to financially back the project, the invitation gave the group an opportunity to legitimize their effort in front of an audience of community members. While we have yet to see official coverage of the event, our friends at SnowBrains are reporting that it was announced at the meeting that Summit Bank has agreed to become the future partner for the effort’s banking services. Again, this isn’t necessarily a game changing announcement, but the group now has the support of both the city’s council as well as a financial institution which is owned by approximately 400 local shareholders, giving credence to their efforts.. For a group that’s looking to purchase a ski resort that’s the size and value of Mt. Bachelor, these are positive and necessary signs of progress. To learn more about the ongoing effort, we recommend checking out the coverage from SnowBrains, the Central Oregon Daily, or Mt. Bachelor Community Inc.’s official website.
#4: The Boston Bruins Announce the Return of Their Annual Skate & Ski Program. We Ask, “Why Aren’t More Teams and Resorts Doing This?”:
Is the annual promotional partnership between the Boston Bruins and Loon Mountain one of the best in the industry? We would argue, “yes.” Image: Skate to Ski Official Website
Finally, rounding out this week’s news is a quick and easy highlight that’s tailor made for our New England readers. This week, the Boston Bruins and Loon Mountain announced that their Skate & Ski program is back for yet another season. For those unaware, the Skate & Ski program is long running, pretty straightforward way to score two tickets for one great price. This year, the Bruins and Loon Mountain are offering a free lift ticket with every ticket sold to select home games, while supplies last. While ticket prices have fluctuated in recent years, this year’s iteration of the promo has a minimum ticket value of $150 to be eligible for the offer.
Ok, enough fine print. Let’s talk about why we think this offer is interesting enough to share here on Top Five Fridays. First, the obvious: getting a ticket to a professional hockey game, as well as a lift ticket, for what equates to about $75 a piece is a pretty sweet deal that we think our Boston based readers should know about. Here’s the part of this promotion that excites us even more though: this concept seems easy to replicate, and could conceivably be rolled out in a number of regions across the United States. Think about it: Vail in particular has made it known that a focus of their strategy has been to acquire feeder hills outside of metropolitan areas as a means of tapping into new markets. That’s why they own Wilmot Mountain, just an hour and a half from where the Chicago Blackhawks play, or Afton Alps in Minnesota, just over a half an hour from the greater Minneapolis region and the home of the Minnesota Wild. Extrapolate that list even further, and you’ve got NHL teams in cities like Denver, Montreal, Vancouver, Utah… the list continues, and that’s just the NHL.
So, why do we love this quick story enough to share it this week? It’s not only because we know we have a ton of readers here in New England who we think should know about this opportunity - it’s also because it’s a promotion style we can get behind. For as much talk as there is about skiing being cost prohibitive to would-be first timers, a promotion like this seems like a great way to entice new people to try the sport. For a multi-resort owner like Vail or Alterra, the model of pairing a professional sports team and a resort in the area seems like a no-brainer, and could be rolled out in numerous cities across North America. While it might be a bit wishful for us to be thinking that way, we do know one thing that’s for sure: you can learn all there is to know about this year’s Skate to Ski offer by heading over to the promotion’s official website.
#5: And Now, Your Edits of the Week: Shane McFall’s “Space Junk” is the Type of Edit That Reminds Us That Skiing is Meant to Be Fun:
Get Hyped for Winter with Jackson Hole’s “GUNRUNNERS”:
It’s Official: Crazy Karl’s “Brap Ski 4” is On the Way”
*** Warning: Thayne Rich Likes to Curse ***