Rewind: 2008 Winter X

As the rage and the fury that is Winter X Games 2008 dissipates into the Aspen ether—and it returns again to the simple place where beer flows like wine and women flock like the Salmon of Capistrano—it’s an appropriate time to reflect on the damage team Red Bull inflicted on the competition.

The first night of X, featuring Men’s SuperPipe finals, may have been the most spectacular and anticipated event in professional freeskiing, ever. As the media played up the Tanner Hall vs. Simon Dumont angle, really the two, who are friends off the hill, were each focused on the task at hand and not worried about the other. In the end, Tanner’s technical prowess, spins to both sides, and seven hit runs impressed the judges into bestowing him with the gold. Simon’s performance was thoroughly awe-inspiring as well, as he came at the SuperPipe like a blazing yellow cannonball and continued to show that nobody pilots higher above the deck than he. He went home with the silver, and a promise to come back next year boosting even higher.

Under the Friday night lights, Jon Olsson lit up the Big Air venue in true rock-star fashion. He began the evening by shrugging off the massive 80-foot gap as “too small.” Despite this fact, he had no trouble giving the roaring crowd a lesson in the evolution of jumping on twin-tips: the double flip. Jon didn’t bust out the Hexo Flip. The world, and the “small” X Games jump, weren’t ready for it. He did, however, Kangaroo Flip himself through three head-to-head elimination rounds to capture the gold medal. He bested Red Bull teammate Simon Dumont in the first round, but had the event actually awarded 2nd and 3rd place, Simon surely would’ve been weighed down with another medal from X.

On the ski side, Saturday was lazy with Slopestyle practice, and a non-X Games quarterpipe comp at Ajax. Tanner showed up and bagged an easy $9K, before walking into the historic Hotel Jerome to claim four awards, including Movie of the Year for “Believe”, at the 2008 POWDER Magazine Video Awards.

Super Sunday kicked off with Daron Rahlves taking a last second gamble in a qualifying run to sneak into the Skier X finals. Obviously he was just trying to keep it interesting for the crowd as he absolutely destroyed the field in the finals run. In third place out the gates, he wasted little time in bowling past everyone in the FIRST TURN. Nobody really saw him after that, except for the frantic crowd at the bottom. Another gold captured for Team Red Bull!

X ended for skiing with the Men’s Slopestyle finals. Jon Olsson laid down some clean and calculated runs topped off with a Kangaroo flip at the bottom. It wasn’t the gold medal he, and his car dealer, were hoping for, but a bronze medal and podium finish amongst the best skiers in the world is nothing to scoff at.

Congratulations to the Red Bull Ski Team for dominating this year’s X. In case you weren’t counting, that’s five medals—three of them gold—in four events. Keep checking in to redbullskiing.com as we keep track of the team as they span out across the globe to slay pow and more comps throughout the season.