The Winter X Games, ESPN’s extravaganza of extreme snow sports, kicked off on Thursday with their crowd-pleasing showcase of some of the world’s best aerial athletes.
But a mystery has settled over the high-altitude stage in Aspen, Colo.
Shaun White, whose style and dominance of snowboarding over a decade have made him the sport’s biggest star, is not in the lineup — and so far nobody is saying why.
“He was not invited,” Danny Chi, an ESPN spokesman, said in an email. He declined to discuss it further.
Efforts to reach White, 29, were unsuccessful.