X Games Minneapolis

X Games Minneapolis 2017 is an action sporting event that will take place July 13–16, 2017, at U.S. Bank Stadium in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota. This Summer X Games will be the first held in the Midwest and the first of two X Games events to be held in the state of Minnesota with another planned for the following summer in 2018. The games will be televised by ESPN and ABC.

How to watch X Games Minneapolis

Date: Thursday, July 13

Location: U.S. Bank Stadium, Minneapolis

TV: ESPN

Online Streaming: WatchESPN, ESPN App (ESPN3)

Schedule:

6 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.: Fruit of the Loom BMX Vert Final (ESPN3)
6:45 p.m. – 7:45 p.m.: Fruit of the Loom Skateboard Vert Final (Samsung VR)
9 p.m. – 11 p.m.: Harley-Davidson Flat Track Racing (ESPN)
11 p.m. 12 a.m.: Fruit of the Loom Skateboard Vert Final (ESPN3)

BMX has kept him coming back to the X Games for years, even though it’s risky. He’s battling an injury this year.

“The lure of the X Games Minneapolis is so big that you make yourself ride but you know you’re kind of hanging on by a thread,” he said. “But isn’t that what the X Games is about? It’s about riding on the edge knowing that at any moment everything can come crashing down.”

The events are truly extreme — the stadium’s biggest structure is an 82-foot-tall mega ramp that vaults athletes across a gap before they land and coast onto another quarter-pipe ramp on the other side.

X Games Minneapolis 2017

“I was riding on the mega ramp and did a back flip varial finger flip over the gap and then went for a 540 on the quarter pipe and bailed out to my knees ’cause that was the first one I’ve sent so I was just kind of feeling it out.”

On Thursday, medals will be awarded in the BMX vert and skateboard vert competitions. There will also be Harley-Davidson Flat Track racing, which will be the only event on television on the day, beginning at 9 p.m. ET and running for about two hours.

The BMX vert final will be streamed on ESPN3 beginning at 6 p.m., and the skateboard vert final will be streamed at 6:45 p.m. for those with the aforementioned headsets. Everyone else can watch that event later, from 11 p.m. to midnight.

Below is all the information you need to watch the action on Thursday, including the full schedule of televised and streamed events.

“All the courses take 12 days or so to get done,” said X Games vice president Tim Reed. “[There’s a] variety of materials: dirt, concrete, wood. Plenty of work going on. And then the show’s four days, and then we usually take about a week or so to clean it up and wrap it out.”

One highlight is a women’s BMX park competition. This year’s event is only a demo to see if there’s interest in making it a proper event for future games.

Hannah Roberts, a 15-year-old BMX rider, hopes the event catches on.

“There wasn’t a lot of women that competed when X Games first started or even rode,” she said. “Our class is a lot smaller than the guys’ so it’s hard to get girls’ class.”