Snowboarder Shaun White said that remarks he made to Forbes magazine in the fall "led ESPN to forgo inviting him to the Winter X Games in Aspen," according to Matt Higgins of the N.Y. TIMES. White, on his comments about an X Games initiative to expand globally in '13, said, "Yeah, I had some constructive criticism, I guess. It wasn't really criticism. It was more public information." ESPN Dir of Communications for West Coast Publicity & X Games Danny Chi "would not explain why White was not invited." Chi: "It's our policy not to discuss the details of our invitation process publicly." White said that he will "continue to focus his energy on overseeing Air & Style, his vision of a snowboarding, art and music festival, which will present an event" in L.A. this weekend. Air & Style will also "make stops at stadiums in Beijing and Innsbruck, Austria, this year." White this week "unveiled additional plans to expand the Air & Style brand to include halfpipe and slopestyle disciplines." White said that the idea "is to create an international professional tour that unifies the many scattered events that characterize the sport, while carrying forward momentum from the Olympics." White: "There's a disconnect. Once the Olympics comes around, we are basically the highest-rated thing on the television at the time. That's why we keep adding new disciplines, like big air and like slopestyle." White "acknowledged that the sport tended to be fragmented." But he said that he "thought he could unify the various interests." White: "I don't want to do it in a hostile takeover sort of way, but we need change." White said, "I have plans to go to Korea and possibly the ('22) Olympics in China. I'm definitely far from done competing" (N.Y. TIMES, 2/19).
