The X Games are an annual extreme sports event hosted, produced, and broadcast by ESPN. Coverage is also shown on ESPN's sister network, ABC. The inaugural X Games were held during the summer of 1995 in Providence and Newport, Rhode Island, United States. Participants compete to win bronze, silver, and gold medals, as well as prize money.
Shaun Roger White is an American professional snowboarder, skateboarder, and musician. He is a three-time Olympic gold medalist in half-pipe snowboarding, and holds the world record for the most X-Games gold medals and most Olympic gold medals by a snowboarder. He has also won 10 ESPY Awards throughout his career in various categories.
Hannah Teter is an American snowboarder. She is an Olympic champion, having won the gold medal in halfpipe at the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Torino, Italy and silver at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. She also won bronze at the 2005 FIS World Championships at Whistler, British Columbia, and has six World Cup victories in her career. In January 2010, Teter was named to the US Team for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. She won the silver medal in women's halfpipe at the Vancouver Games. Teter came in fourth at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Lindsey Jacobellis is an American snowboarder.
Sarah Jean Burke was a Canadian freestyle skier who was a pioneer of the superpipe event. She was a five-time Winter X Games gold medallist, and won the world championship in the halfpipe in 2005. She successfully lobbied the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to have the event added to the Olympic program for the 2014 Winter Olympics. She was considered a medal favourite in the event. Burke died following a training accident in Utah in 2012.
Grete Eliassen is an American-Norwegian freestyle skier. She won a bronze medal in Slopestyle at the 2011 Winter X Games XV in Aspen, Colorado, behind Kaya Turski and Keri Herman. She has won 6 medals at the Winter X Games in slopestyle and halfpipe events including back to back gold medals in 2005 and 2006. Eliassen serves as the 16th president of the Women's Sports Foundation, effective January 2017.
Rosalind Groenewoud is a Canadian freeskier. She is the 2011 FIS World Champion in halfpipe, Groenewoud is also a 2012 Winter X Games champion x 2 and has 3 silver and two bronze medals from X Games competitions in halfpipe. She won the AFP Overall Championship in 2009 & 2010 and AFP Halfpipe Overall Ranking in 2012. She is the first woman to design her own pro-model freestyle ski with the female owned ski company Coalition Snow.
Devin Marie Logan is an American freeskier from West Dover, Vermont. She won silver in Olympic slopestyle at the 2014 Winter Olympics held in Sochi.
Brita Sigourney is an American freestyle skier. She attended Santa Catalina School in Monterey, California, and later went on to attend the University of California, Davis, where she played water polo. She trained in her career as a freestyle skier in Park City, Utah. She won a silver medal in the superpipe at Winter X Games XV in 2011, followed with a bronze in 2012. She has competed in both the 2014 and 2018 Winter Olympics, finishing 6th in 2014. She won a bronze medal in the 2018 Olympics on February 19, 2018, with a score of 91.6, which she achieved on her third run. Up until her third run, the judges expressed to an NBC broadcaster of their approval of her form and amplitude but that she needed improvement with her creativity. She was good friends with her competitor Annalisa Drew and regretted bumping her off the podium. She won another bronze at the 2019 FIS World Championship in halfpipe.
David Wise is an American freestyle skier. He is a two-time Olympic gold medalist and a four-time X Games Gold Medalist. In 2014, Wise won his third consecutive gold medal at X Games XVIII in Aspen, Colorado, before heading to Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics. There, he became the first Olympic gold medalist in the Men's Freeski Halfpipe, which debuted in the Winter Games that year. In 2018, after struggling both personally and professionally since his win in Sochi, Wise won his fourth gold medal at the X Games just before he left for PyeongChang to defend his Olympic title. After a sub-par qualifying competition that placed him in the fifth drop-in position for the finals, Wise failed to complete each of his first two runs due, in both cases, to a binding malfunction. On his third and final run, Wise completed a career-best run to take the gold medal, the second Olympic gold medal of his career, with a score of 97.20.
Half-pipe skiing is the sport of riding snow skis on a half-pipe. Competitors perform a series of tricks while going down the pipe. The current world record for highest jump in a half-pipe is held by Joffrey Pollet-Villard, with 26 feet 3 inches. The sport is considered to be dangerous compared to other sports, and helmets are required to be worn during competitions. Half-pipe skiing has been part of the Winter X Games since 2002, and made its Olympic debut at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. David Wise of the United States of America became the first Olympic champion in this discipline with a total of 92.00 points.
Arielle Townsend Gold is an American Olympic medalist snowboarder.
Dara Howell is a Canadian freestyle skier. She was the first freestyle skier to win a gold medal in ski slopestyle at the inaugural event at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Howell has also won a bronze medal in women's slopestyle at the Winter X Games XVII in Aspen, Colorado, behind Tiril Sjåstad Christiansen and Kaya Turski.
The United States competed at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, from February 7 to 23, 2014. Team USA consisted of 222 athletes competing in all 15 sports.
Chloe Kim is an American snowboarder. At the 2018 Winter Olympics, she became the youngest woman to win an Olympic snowboarding gold medal when she won gold in the women's snowboard halfpipe at 17 years old. She is a six-time X Games gold medalist and the first woman to win two gold medals in snowboarding at the Winter Youth Olympic Games. She is the current World, Olympic, Youth Olympic, and X Games champion in the halfpipe and the first to win the title at all four major events.
Aaron Blunck is an American freestyle skier from Crested Butte, Colorado.
Augustus Richard Kenworthy is a British-American freestyle skier, actor, and YouTuber. He competes in slopestyle, halfpipe and big air. Kenworthy won the silver medal in Men's slopestyle at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. As of 2019, Kenworthy represents Great Britain. He was cast as Chet Clancy in the ninth season of the horror anthology series American Horror Story: 1984.
Kaitlyn Brooke Farrington is an American former professional snowboarder who grew up on a cattle ranch near Bellevue, Idaho, and now lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. She won the gold medal in the women's half-pipe competition at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Prior to her Olympic debut, she competed in the 2010 European Winter X Games and won the gold medal.
Cassie Sharpe is a Canadian freestyle skier. Sharpe is the reigning Olympic champion in women's halfpipe after winning gold in Pyeongchang, South Korea at the 2018 Winter Olympics. She won a silver medal at the 2015 World Championships in halfpipe in Kreischberg and has won gold and bronze in superpipe at the Winter X Games in 2016 and 2018 respectively.
Elizabeth Marian Swaney is a Hungarian freestyle skier. She competed for Hungary in the 2018 Winter Olympics in the women's halfpipe. She was unable to qualify for the 2014 Winter Olympics for Venezuela in both skeleton and freestyle skiing, and qualified for the 2018 Winter Olympics in the women's halfpipe, in which she placed last.
