Superpark 6 Sends Skier to Winter X-Games
Interview by Derek Taylor
On paper, they are polar opposites. One is skiing's biggest, baddest invite-only terrain park session, a non-competitive arena for filmers and photographers to capture the best athletes in park skiing. The other is the highest profile competition in skiing, with nightly play on the world's biggest sports network and coverage on Sportcenter. In 2004, POWDER's Superpark and the ESPN Winter X Games are set to cross paths. We Sat down Chris Schuster of Global Event Management, organizers of the skiing events for the Winter X Games to find out exactly how this unlikely marriage will take place
POWDER: So, we have some changes to the Winter X Games coming up this year. Tell us what's going on.
Schuster: It's not 100% confirmed, but they already made this change for the summer games, and there was talk of doing this last year. For the judged events -- as it pertains to skiing, slopestyle and pipe -- they are reducing the numbers to 10 athletes only. There won't be the preliminary rounds as they have had in the past. Those 10 athletes will go right into a final.
POWDER: Is there anyone who is already in?
Schuster: I'm waiting to hear from ESPN on a lot of these issues, as far as how they want these selections to be done. For the summer games they essentially wiped clean all the previous qualifiers. They told the organizers to take the winner from last year's event and that will be the only automatic bid. For the rest of the field, [ESPN asked organizers] to put together a committee from your industry to collectively select the other nine people. I'm against that in general, because no matter who you put on this committee, you're never going to get a completely unbiased group. That's one of the reasons; another reason is that method virtually eliminates any chance of a dark horse getting in the comp and winning it. Just for example, if this had happened last year, I don't think Simon [Dumont, SuperPipe gold medalist] would have been in the comp. Obviously that would have changed everything.
POWDER: What's your plan to correct that situation for skiing?
Schuster: What we are going to try to do is have one or two events early next winter with the last one, the one closest to the X Games, being the main one. We would take say the top five or 10 finishers from the big events -- so maybe the top 10 guys from the U.S. Open, invite them to this last event. Essentially it would take the place of the preliminaries at the X Games, only it would be a much bigger field. So we'd have maybe 80 to 100 competitors in this event, and it would be a level playing field for all these people. Then we can select the best out of that group, which I think is just a much fairer means of getting a top-10 field. And I'd also like to bring back the top three at least from the year before. Again, I'm waiting to see what ESPN says.
POWDER: How does Superpark fit into those plans?
Schuster: This will work either way, I think, no matter what ESPN says. The most impressive athlete overall over the course of the week, which will be voted on by all the athletes here, all the media people, and all the staff. The most impressive person will be invited to compete in slopestyle.
POWDER: So after this week, the only people who know for sure that they will be in the X Games are the winner from last year, and whoever we take from this event?
Schuster: Exactly.