The Winter X-Games are slated to take place in Aspen, Colorado this weekend, Jan 23-25. The X-Games features 20 different events for the world’s top skiers and snowboarders in an invite only competition. Hastings’ Jaylen Hanson is participating in the Women’s Street Style on Saturday, Jan. 25 at 3:30 p.m. Hanson is the first of eight to run the course in the competition.
According to the X-Games website, Street Style is an event where athletes compete on a rail and urban feature inspired course in a jam session format. Street Style is judged on overall impressions taking into account progression, execution, difficulty, variety and originality.
Rules at a glance:
Playoffs: Two heats of four athletes, 10-minute jam session, judged on overall impression
The top two highest scores from each heat advance to the Final, scores reset to zero.
Final: One heat of four, 10-minute jam session, judged on overall impression.
Highest overall impression score wins.
Thankfully, Jaylen’s dad is Hastings High School Athletic Director Trent Hanson and he did a great job putting together information on the event.
“X-Games features five total disciplines with competitions over four days (including halfpipe, slopestyle, big air, and knuckle huck). There are only 25 women riders total, as about half of them compete in multiple disciplines. This is the first year that ‘Streetstyle’ will feature a full podium and the same medals and prize purse on par with the other events. Since it's new for X-Games, it's a bit of ‘wait and see’ with regard to how they cover streetstyle from a media perspective. At other events Jaylen has been in like DewTour, the broadcasts have had multiple cameras, replays, graphics and informed commentators - presented just like a football or basketball game. No idea what this will look like, but hopefully it's high level to make it more enjoyable for viewers to know what the heck is happening,” Trent said in his email.
He added, “Mia Brookes from Great Britain is probably the best all-around women's competition snowboarder in the world right now and is a heavy favorite to win. She is on another level and is crazy to watch!”
After the X-Games, Jaylen will return home for the Red Bull Heavy Metal competition at the St. Paul Capital on Saturday, February 1.
“The event is free and starts at 2:00 p.m. and ends at about 5:00 p.m. This competition features three different zones, and each zone is live for 45 minutes. A field of about 20 men and 20 women take as many runs as they desire at a series of different features in each zone. It's totally different from X-Games. While that event is on a course at a mountain resort, this one features setups on concrete steps. There is no official day-of live stream, it's really in-person only. Some snowboard outlets (e.g. Slush Magazine) will stream it from a phone on Instagram, but that has obvious limitations. There will be a one-hour recap show on ESPN2 on Sunday, February 16 at 9:30 p.m.,” explained Trent.
“This is the third year of this event, and second time it has been in St. Paul. Jaylen was the runner-up in the women's field in 2022 (Duluth) and 2023 (Detroit). It's hard to explain how they put this one on with all manner of rails, boxes, and jumps but yes, it's ‘street snowboarding at the Capital.’” He added.
Good luck to Jaylen Hanson at the X-Games and Red Bull competitions!