Replying to The first downfall of our sport

On the front page of NS there is a discussion about winter X-games athletes. The X-games purpose was to establish a top notch competition for extreme sports, which were not in the Olympics. However, in the Olympics the athletes are not selected, instead earn their spots by making it on to the Olympic team, and must win a World Cup etc... Many of our industries big names have arrived through working their way up and proving themselves by qualifying for the X-games and proving their skills amongst the already profound riders. Take for example Tanner Hall, Simon Dumont, Peter Olenick, Corey Vanular, Dan Marion, Nick Mercon, Iannick B. and countless others.

Nothing against any of the athletes that will be competing this year because most of the tricks that will be thrown will be un-paralleled by any other skiers on the planet, however shouldn't you still have to earn your spot on the most exclusive and elite competition our sport has? The producers of X-games may argue that it is for T.V. ratings because people like to watch big names, but lets be honest. Aside from a few people, most of the skiers in the X-games are new names to people watching the event outside of the ski world. Ratings would probably go up if there were complete no names who came up and stunned the X-games with unseen tricks and innovative style. If our sport wants to continually be re-freshed with new names, styles, and tricks we should do everything in our power to bring back the qualifiers, to bring back X-games to the athletes. That is what it is for isn't it? Live spectators at the X-games pay $0 as well as T.V. viewers. The money comes from sponsors regardless. With so many amazingly talented athletes in our sport today dozens of various ways skiers may have shown they should be in X-games how can a panel simply sit down and pick 20?

So let's keep helping progressing our sport, and keep it going for the athletes.