X Games Aspen 2025 Preview: The Last Hurrah?

New Event – Street Style

After a successful test event last year, Street Style gets the green light in 2025. Riders will compete on a street-inspired rail course in a jam session format—fundamentally it’s a rail jam.

These kinds of events have become increasingly popular over the last few years, with events such as Rock A Rail popping up across Europe. For X Games, it is an opportunity to invite a different breed of skier, creating matchups we did not know we needed to see. Pitching young rail gun Tucker Fitzsimons up against the all-time great and somehow ageless Andreas Håtveit is like a Luke versus Yoda scenario. We cannot wait to see how that goes down, but my money is on Yoda.

Big Air

This year the format changes once again, but fear not, for once they have simplified things. We have come full circle and arrived back at a best trick contest – two jumps, best trick counts, the old school way. No style tricks, no left and right requirement – do your best trick and get paid. Simple.

“Best trick” leaves a lot of room for subjectivity, however, and I am confident that it will not descend into a spin-to-win contest. Surely Alex Hall and Matej Svancer will have something up their sleeves to mess with the judges.

Last year Troy Podmilsak took his first X Games gold, ripping his triple 2160 mute and then giving possibly one of the worst interviews in X history. If he lands the 21 again he will be in contention to defend the title. Hopefully his agent has had a word with him about his public speaking.

French Big Air queen Tess Ledeux will be back to defend her title having taken a short break from contests, spending the last few weeks resting and training in preparation for X. Megan Oldham also returns to Aspen for the first time since landing the historic triple cork that saw her win in 2023.

Women’s Big Air has been the most exciting event to watch over the last few years – the sport has progressed at lightning speed. Hopefully the girls will continue that trend and unveil something new in Aspen. With three different winners in the first three big air contests of the season, this one is impossible to predict.

Slopestyle

The shape crew for the X Games always delivers one of the most creative courses on the circuit and this year will be no different. Expect massive rails, transition take-offs and the famous “Money Booter” jump at the bottom.

Last year’s men’s contest saw an epic throwdown with all the top six riders receiving scores in the 90s – skier after skier dropped hammer after hammer, leaving the judges with almost nowhere to go. Birk Rudd came out on top that day and is surely riding high after his comeback win in Laax last week against a very similar field.

Landing the most progressive slopestyle run ever put down by a woman, Tess Ledeux made it two-from-two in Aspen last year by winning the slopestyle contest on her first run. Having put it down clean and scoring a whopping 95.33 on her first attempt, she cruised two victory laps, knowing she couldn’t improve on what she described as the best slopestyle run of her life.

Eileen Gu took an impressive win in Laax last week, but will have her work cut out if Tess can ski to the best of her ability.

Superpipe

Often the contest that breeds the fiercest rivalries and creates the greatest drama, from Tanner vs. Simon to the dominance of Kevin Rolland and David Wise, the X Games Superpipe has something special. Even if you do not follow halfpipe skiing for the rest of the year, you take notice when the lights go up in Aspen.

Last year, style masters Nico Porteous and Hunter Hess proved there is room for creativity in transition riding, both making the podium with highly individual runs. However, it was the unstoppable Alex Ferreira who took the top spot with sheer technicality and amplitude on his way to an unbeaten season . Nico has unfortunately retired from contest riding, but another Nick has had a meteoric comeback. Nick Goepper could add to his already impressive X Games medal tally this week – watch this space.

The only question regarding the women’s side is: can anyone beat Eileen? She has been the definition of dominant over the last couple of years and has shown no signs of slowing down this year either. The rest of the field have been working hard to close the gap – maybe Amy Fraser or Zoe Atkin can put it all together on the night and dethrone the Chinese empress. And after a three-year competitive hiatus, Canadian halfpipe legend Cassie Sharpe is back in the bib — it’ll be interesting to see her square off against the new pipe royalty.

Knuckle Huck

Quickly becoming a fan favouite, Knuckle Huck is back for another year. An event unique to the X Games, riders boost, bounce and butter off the knuckle of the big air jump trying to land the most stylish tricks possible. 

Colby Stevenson and Olivia Asselin took the wins respectively last year with a display of raw style and technicality. This will be the second year of the women’s competition, so expect to see the girls use their experience of the format and throw down even harder this year.

X Games Aspen 2025 Livestream Info

Every event will be live streamed on the X Games Youtube channel and will be available for replay directly after the event. 

Some of the events are going down at ungodly hours for those of us who live in Europe. However, if you don’t fancy throwing a party and staying up all night with your friends to watch live, do not despair. Here at Downdays we do not have any friends either, and will be putting in the graveyard shifts over the weekend to bring you reviews and recaps to read when you wake up.