What we have here is the problem the IOC has set forth by putting countries first in the athlete selection of an individual sport. Instead of athletes qualifying individually for spots in the olympics, countries like the US and Canada are forced to pick a fraction of their citizens who happen to be top competitors in the world, while countries that have fewer freeskiing athletes, but quotas to fill, will send skiers who have fewer top finishes and points than any of the Americans that are caught up in the clusterfuck that is these selection events.
The result? Selection events that are more competitive than the actual olympics will be, with all the top skiers competing for 4 spots. At the olympics, we'll have a field of half the top ranked competitors, and a bunch of other skiers, though noteworthy, won't be quite on the same level.
Until all of the true top competitors in the sport can qualify for the olympics, which should be the pinnacle of competition, the X games will continue to take that role, because the task of choosing athletes won't result in countries sending less than half of their deserving skiers.
