Word: eventing
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...moments. On Wednesday, when President Obama entered a briefing room at the Old Executive office building, his staff and the press instinctively stood up. Obama was taken off guard. "I'm still getting used to that," he said, after telling everyone to have a seat. Later in the same event, Obama struggled with the practice of using a different pen for every document he signed. "They are very nice pens," the President advised his aides. (See pictures of people around the world watching Obama's inauguration...
...game, but no one would ever get to see that love in action without TV commercials and endorsements and sponsorships. In some cases, of course - the World Series, say, or the Olympics - one could argue that television networks and corporate sponsors are merely covering, inflating and capitalizing on an event that was going on regardless...
...Games, a collection of extreme sports competitions whose winter event takes place January 22-25, did not exist until ESPN (and its hipper offshoot, ESPN2) realized in the early 1990s that there was a huge, demographically desirable slice of America that wasn't watching SportsCenter. ESPN executives, aware they were missing out on ad dollars that could be coaxed from finicky flannel-wearing Gen Xers, launched the X Games in 1995. (See TIME's Top 10 Fringe World Titles...
...That first year, the event was packaged as the "Extreme Games" and included skateboarding, bungee jumping, roller blading, mountain biking, sky surfing, and even street luging. As with the Olympics, winners were awarded gold, silver and bronze medals. Not everyone took the event very seriously. One especially snarky USA Today columnist called the X Games the "Look Ma, No Hands Olympics," adding, "Apparently - and it's possible I'm misinterpreting a cultural trend here - if you strap your best friend to the hood of a '72 Ford Falcon, drive it over a cliff, juggle three babies and a chain...
...franchise had become successful enough that ESPN launched the Winter X Games, featuring skiers and snowboarders. The winter event eventually got substantially more "extreme" with the inclusion of sports like snowmobile freestyle and ice climbing - a strenuously athletic yet visually uninspiring sport that didn't prove popular enough to stay on the docket. But in one respect, USA Today wasn't far off: the X Games, both winter and summer, have become a proving ground of sorts, with organizers unafraid to experiment with burgeoning sports, some of which have stuck around and some which have fallen by the wayside after...