It Was Perfect Place to Cop an Amplitude

The Winter X Games wrapped up fittingly Tuesday night, with daring young men aboard high-powered snowmobiles careening around a jump-filled course in a war of attrition, hanging on for their lives and, in some cases, being tossed through the air like rag dolls.

Aspen Valley Hospital is thankful for the business, having received several snocross competitors -- among others -- for injuries ranging from back sprains to broken wrists. And that was during practice and preliminaries.

In the snocross final, Canada’s Blair Morgan emerged victorious, beating out, among others, brothers Shaun and Kurtis Crapo.

And with that a fond farewell is being bid by more than 230 athletes, an ESPN staff of about 800 and an estimated 69,750 fans who had come to be part of a rollicking four-day sporting festival in which amplitude, or big air, was the operative word.

Now this quaint mountain retreat becomes that once more.

But the memories -- of high drama, intrigue and emotional turmoil -- will linger.

Finland’s Antti Autti, 19, for example, won gold in the snowboarding superpipe with a third and final run he opened with back-to-back 1,080-degree spins and concluded with two 900s and two 720s. That was followed, on the night’s final run, by Andy “Amplitude” Finch vaulting from fifth to second, stealing second place from Danny Kass, and knocking superstar Shaun White, who had been trailing Kass, out of the medal picture.

Tanner Hall, 21, trying to win gold medals in the slopestyle event four years in a row, was in first place after both of his runs and awaiting the final run of Canada’s Charles Gagnier. Hall watched along with everyone else as Gagnier, 19, launched off the final kicker and stuck a flawless 1,080 ski-grab to best his rival with a score of 92.66, afterward announcing, “I feel like I have arrived.”

Occasionally, the theater spilled off of the slopes and into Aspen Valley Hospital, which received 17 patients courtesy of X Games.

The Jacobellis family will never forget their X Games adventure.

Ben Jacobellis, 24, took a wicked spill in the men’s boardercross race, landing on the back of his head and neck. He lay motionless on the course, surrounded by medics, as sister Lindsey stood in the gate atop the course waiting to take her first run in the women’s boardercross. She was out of sight, wondering why there was a delay and why she hadn’t heard her brother’s name being announced, along with others as they crossed the finish line.

Ben was taken to the hospital. His parents followed and, according to Lindsey, they were shown an X-ray that revealed two broken vertebrae. “They said they were ready to fly him out [to see a specialist] and then my dad saw the name on the X-ray and says, ‘That’s not my son!’ ” Lindsey recalled.

“If my parents weren’t on edge enough, when they heard that their hearts almost stopped.”

Ben, it turned out, had suffered only a moderate concussion. Lindsey, 19, still dealing with the uncertainty, went on to win her third consecutive gold medal in the event and afterward said of her brother: “I just hope he’s OK. He’s a strong guy and I love him very much.”

Crashes are part of the X Games landscape, of course, but with the enormity of amplitude on display this year, one can’t help but wonder to what extremes action sports athletes will go before major injuries start outnumbering minor injuries, and before a pall is cast when someone pays the ultimate sacrifice.

“We’re not content with settling,” host Selema Masekela told reporters at a pre-competition briefing. “The runs you saw last year, that got people gold medals, will get them a pat on the back or maybe a bronze if they’re lucky. These guys push themselves in a way I don’t see anywhere else in sports.”

One need look no further than the superpipe for evidence: 1080s, or three full rotations, have replaced 900s as necessary facets of a routine for those hoping to medal.

To put that into perspective, none of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic medalists -- Ross Powers, Kass and J.J. Thomas, who swept the halfpipe -- even had a 900 in his repertoire back then. Now even the women are doing them.

“From an amplitude standpoint, the women are really stepping it up,” Powers said. “They’ve come a long way.”

And they’d be the first to acknowledge that they are hardly content where they are.