Sun, Jan 31, 2021 page11

• X Games riders return to roots with Knuckle Huck

  • AP, ASPEN, Colorado
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  There is only one rule in the event that has captured the imaginations of all of the high-flying daredevils at the Winter X Games: Do something cool.

  This weekend, cool happens in a contest called Knuckle Huck, a set of low-flying, highly creative trips down the mountain that have helped action sports rediscover their roots.

  Without the bright lights and TV cameras, this very well might be what snowboarding or freestyle skiing looks like when friends get together for a day on the slopes.

  

  A photograph provided by ESPN shows Zeb Powell competing in the final of the Knuckle Huck snowboarding competition at the Winter X Games in Aspen, Colorado, on Friday.

  Photo: AP

  The uniquely Winter X contest works like this: A group of snowboarders or freestyle skiers have 20 minutes to “huck” themselves over the bottom “knuckle” of the hill that is set up near the big-air venue — bypassing the massive kicker completely.

  Judges rank the riders on overall impression — no scores.

  The winner takes home a set of gold-plated brass knuckles dangling from a chain.

  “It’s so much fun, because there are so many endless possibilities,” said snowboarder Zeb Powell, who won the competition last year, but is sitting out this season as he recovers from a knee injury. “You’re always jumping out of your chair because you don’t know what you just saw. You can’t process it. You’re like: ‘Oh my gosh, how did he do that?’”

  Where the typical halfpipe or slopestyle contestant seeks perfection on high-flying moves that have been done before, hundreds of times, Knuckle Huck calls for absolute originality.

  “The way you win the event is by doing something that doesn’t have a name, by coming up with a creative way to go over the knuckle or to hand-drag it or flip in a way that has never been done,” said Tom Wallisch, a former Winter X Games freestyle skier who is now a broadcaster.

  In a world that has been constantly defined by progression — that is, death-defying leaps and flips above the frozen halfpipe and the rock-hard slopestyle kickers — this Winter X event harkens back to the sport’s roots.

  It speaks of a time when friends went to the mountain looking for moves that would impress each other, not necessarily some judge sitting in a booth.

  “That’s the closest any of these X Games events come to feeling like what the sport really is all about,” said Wallisch, who participated in the inaugural ski Knuckle Huck competition last winter. “For us growing up, it’s all about skiing with your friends, pushing each other, trying to learn new tricks, just laughing and having a good time and sort of the camaraderie of skiing together.”
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