Today marks the beginning of prelims at the Winter Dew Tour’s debut in Breckinridge, Colorado. For many in the snow sports industry who have pined for an event of this stature this has been a long time coming. Snowboarding and especially Freeskiing have struggled to build events outside of the Winter X-Games that are capable of garnering a national audience. The Winter Dew Tour, which features three stops (Breck, CO, Mt.Snow, VT, Northstar, CA) shows that sponsors are now willing to invest in the viability of these sports at a national level. The event will be covered by NBC and USA today. Click here for air times.
While this may be detrimental for smaller events such as the Paul Mitchell Freeski Opens and the Vans Triple Crown, I think that the rising tide will lift all ships. More coverage of these sports will help to give them a sense of continuity that is currently elusive. Outside of the X-games and a couple Fuel T.V. broadcasts, winter action sports are largely inaccessible to the general public. Hopefully this tour can create the drama and personalities that its summer counterpart has done so successfully. Athletes such as BMX rider Mike Spinner and skateboarder Chaz Ortiz are now marquee names after breaking out in the Summer Dew Tour.
Before I go total corpo and get accused of selling out I wanted to post the following video as a testament to the attitudes of the athletes competing this weekend. Traveling Circus is a web series created by the Line skiers Will Wesson and Andy Parry. They will not be competing in the Dew Tour but their approach to skiing and especially rail features is having a significant effect of the progression of the sport.
Traveling Circus - Episode 3 - The Incredible Journey NY to CO from Line Skis on Vimeo.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment