by Kit Fischer
photo by Jordan Bentley

And that’s not all that’s “unOlympic” about these athletes. They don’t spend endless hours training at the National Olympic Training Center; many learned their crash and burn routines in their backyards or at local ski areas. They are not athletes who care about their public image or what they portray to foreign countries; most are covered in a mess of baggy clothing and reflective goggles that hide their squinted, glazed-over pupils. Drug testing? Give me a break. But the informality and carefree lifestyle associated with these games is precisely its allure to many X games athletes and spectators.

Approaching the terrain park at Aspen’s Buttermilk Resort, loudspeakers blurted out sponsors and names while background music pounded out the rhythm of Afroman’s theme song, “Because I Got High.” The 15-year-old girl next to me banged her head and mouthed the words as she watched the baggy-pantsed competitors practice their airs in the superpipe. I knew I was in the right place and these competitors knew it too. And I wondered, did these kids not go to “school because they got high,” or did they have something better in mind?

Three-time X Games gold medalist Tanner Hall now earns hundreds of thousands of dollars annually through skiing competitions and through Oakley sunglasses and Armada ski sponsorships. Winning big competitions and becoming nationally recognized is how these skiers survive. “The X Games is by far the biggest freeride competition of the year, and I’m out here to show everybody that I can win it again,” said Hall. As I tried to imagine what the lifestyle of a fellow 20-year-old with piles of money might be like, I found refuge in the VIP tent-my thoughts of the “high life” of stardom-growing as I entered the deluxe heated room.

I didn’t truly belong in this oasis of importance but I had convinced an ESPN media rep earlier in the day that I was an import journalist and would be very upset unless I had a card that designated me a “VIP”. She attempted to identify me for over an hour while I sat patiently on the outdoor patio. Finally, she crumbled, although it wasn’t clear whether it was pressure or pity. I suspect she was thinking, “Who the hell are you? You think I’m going to give a college kid privileges to an open bar?” It was like getting the gold medal. For the first time in my adult life I had been given the status of “very important.”

The real VIPs were mostly ESPN execs and marketing sponsors. The bennies of VIPdom: a fully catered buffet, closed circuit viewing of the X Games, Playstation 2, massage therapy, and an open bar. It may have been standard fare for the real VIPs, but I was like an eight-year-old in a candy store. Even though I knew that it was all free, I practically ran from the bar to the buffet making sure neither were running low on supplies.