Monday, February 25, 2002
Snowboarding adds new feel to Olympics
Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY -- Once a genteel celebration confined to
quaint country retreats, the biggest, hippest Winter Olympics in
history edged closer to looking like an X Games.
Busting loose with moguls and halfpipes, mosh pits in the medals
plaza, and bands like Smash Mouth, Barenaked Ladies and the Foo
Fighters rocking the night, these Olympics made an unabashed bid to
grab young fans -- at the events and through television
The strategy worked.
Chris Klug's bronze put the United States over the top with its 14th medal, breaking the national Winter Games record of 13 set in 1998.
Generation Xers and younger fans swelled the crowds to 30,000 at
snowboarding, and packed the medals plaza, Bud World, and the
streets of downtown Salt Lake City in a 17-day party.
Watching at home, viewership among people ages 18-34 rose 23
percent over Nagano four years ago and 25 percent over the Summer
Olympics in Sydney two years ago, NBC said. The biggest jump was
among men in that age group, with a 26 percent increase over
Nagano.
"It doesn't matter if it's any type of sport, they're the most
difficult audience to reach," said Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC
sports.
The X Games, created by ESPN in 1995 as the Extreme Games,
emphasize speed and daredevil tricks in nontraditional sports. With
events such as acrobatic skateboarding, inline skating and biking,
they have been hugely successful with teens and fans in their 20s.
The Olympics, worried about falling behind the times, lured
snowboarders to show off their stuff at Nagano. But bad weather, a
flap over whether a gold medalist smoked marijuana, and time zone
differences conspired to reduce the sport's visibility to American
viewers.
That didn't stop snowboarding's boom as the country's fastest
growing sport. At these games they became a prime-time sensation
with new stars like U.S. halfpipe riders Ross Powers, Danny Kass
and J.J. Thomas, who won the men's gold, silver and bronze, and
American Kelly Clark, who took the women's gold.
X-treme, X-citing, X-hilirating, it comes with its own language.
Here's Powers describing his gold medal ride:
"I dropped in with tons of speed, probably did the biggest
backside air I've ever done, then went to a frontside air, then a
McTwist, which is kind of like a front flip 540, then a frontside 7
with an Indy grab, to a 720 with an Indy grab, to a stalefish, to a
backside 360 mute to a switch McTwist."
Kass performed while listening to a compilation of Metallica,
AC/DC, and Black Sabbath through his earphones, hardly the kind of
music heard at figure skating.
The moguls and aerials in freestyle skiing added to the X Games
look and made for some striking scenes. They also boosted the U.S.
medal haul with three silver medals.
International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge
applauded the record 34 medals for the United States, saying it's
important to the IOC that the host nation do well. He said the X
Games sports were added to the Olympics "to make sure we have
sports that are popular, that attract the interest of youth."
That was NBC's thinking, too. The network saw in Sydney that
young viewers were tuning out the Olympics. As the Winter Games
approached, NBC's marketing emphasized the cooler, faster, more
dangerous sports. Mix in live music with top rock bands playing for
big crowds in the medals plaza every night, scenes of athletes
bodysurfing atop frenzied masses, and the network had a formula for
success.
Salt Lake City is the largest city ever to play host to the
Winter Games, and the crowds roaming the streets were more akin to
those at a Summer Olympics.
The first Winter Games were held in Chamonix, France, in 1924
with figure skating, speedskating, skiing and ice hockey. A total
of 14 gold medals were handed out. The number of events grew over
the years, but subsequent Winter Olympics were similarly cozy
affairs in places like St. Moritz, Switzerland, and Lake Placid,
N.Y.
That's been the way of the Winter Olympics ever since, pushed
along by the popularity of the X Games.
Even figure skating may be going in that direction. After the
judging controversy in the pairs event, the International Skating
Union proposed a system that would dump the 6.0 perfect score in
favor of one in which a skater would get higher and higher points
for more difficult jumps. It's a change that would encourage
skaters to go for more quads, more combinations.
Call it an X Games spinoff. Quintuple, anyone?
