Snow Summit Lands ESPN's Winter X Games

In a press conference on Thursday June 27, Jeff Ruhe, ESPN's senior vice president announced that Snow Summit Resort in Big Bear Lake, California was chosen to host a four-day winter sports showcase organized by ESPN.

The Winter X Games, scheduled for January 30-Feburary 2 1997, will feature what ESPN is calling "aggressive snowboarding" (is there such a thing as passive snowboarding?) as well as Ice Climbing, Snow Bicycling (yes, riding mountain bikes on snow), Super Modified Shovel Racing, and a cross-over competition where individuals will compete in skateboard, inline, and snowboard events.

The snowboarding events, called the "cornerstone" of the Winter X Games, will include Slopestyle, Big Air, Halfpipe and a race called the BoarderX, a version of the trademarked "BoarderCross" style race.

As can be expected, Snow Summit's Marketing Director Greg Ralph is completely stoked. "This is the biggest thing we've every done. We've produced many quality skiing, snowboarding, and mountain biking events over the years, but none of them are as big as this," he said. "This is huge and I'm completely excited about it."

Similar to the summer version, the Winter X Games will bring together the world's top athletes to compete for more than $200,000 in prize money. The events will generate 16 hours of television coverage divided evenly between ESPN and ESPN2. ESPN International will distribute the games to 150 countries world wide. Now that ABC and ESPN are so cozy there is a possibility that some of it will air on ABC's Wide World of Sports.