Australian quartet drafted into inaugural X Games League Winter season

Four of Australia’s leading Park & Pipe athletes have been selected in the inaugural MoonPay X Games League Winter Draft, with Scotty James, and New South Wales Institute of Sport (NSWIS) trio Indra Brown, Valentino Guseli and Tess Coady securing places on three of the four new X Games Clubs ahead of the competition’s first winter season in 2027.

Held in Los Angeles on 16 September, the draft saw more than 180 of the world’s leading skiers and snowboarders nominate for just 40 positions across four clubs – XC Golden State, XC New York, XC Park City and XC Whistler. Each club selected a 10-athlete roster comprising five men and five women, with both skiing and snowboarding required to be represented.

The draft itself was conducted over five rounds using a “snake” format, with each club selecting one male and one female athlete per round. Athletes who opted into the draft but were not selected can still compete at Winter X Games events as free agents and may also be called into clubs as injury replacements.

Australian snowboard star Scotty James will represent XC Golden State, joining a roster that includes inaugural number one draft pick Eileen Gu, New Zealand freeskier Luca Harrington and some of the biggest names in skiing and snowboarding. James was already one of the XGL’s six Winter Founder Athletes and heads into the new competition having won a fifth consecutive X Games SuperPipe title in Aspen earlier this year – his eighth X Games gold – before claiming silver at his fifth Olympic Winter Games.

Sixteen-year-old freeski halfpipe star Indra Brown (NSWIS) was drafted to XC Park City, alongside Olympic champions and X Games stars including Yiming Su, Mathilde Gremaud, Birk Ruud and Alex Hall. Brown burst onto the international scene last season, earning X Games silver on debut, finishing fifth at the Milano Cortina Olympic Winter Games and later claiming the Junior World Championship halfpipe title.

Valentino Guseli (NSWIS) and Tess Coady (NSWIS) will become Australian teammates on XC Whistler, giving the club two of Australia’s most accomplished and versatile snowboarders. Guseli competed across halfpipe, slopestyle and big air throughout the 2025/26 season, finishing fifth in Olympic halfpipe and 10th in big air, while Coady – the Beijing 2022 Olympic slopestyle bronze medallist – finished fourth in slopestyle at X Games Aspen earlier this year.

How will the X Games League work?

The new format adds a season-long team competition to the traditional individual X Games model. Athletes will still chase individual X Games results, but their performances will also earn points towards their club’s position in the XGL standings.

The inaugural Winter League will feature three stops, beginning at Aspen, Colorado from 29–31 January, before moving to Calgary, Canada from 19–21 February and concluding with the championship event at Ruka, Finland from 9–11 April. Ski and snowboard competition will feature SuperPipe, Big Air, Slopestyle and Knuckle Huck.

At each league competition, club points are determined by the finishing position of its athletes. Where a club has more than one athlete competing in the same discipline, only its highest-placed athlete contributes to the club result. Points accumulate across the season, with the club holding the highest overall total following the Ruka finale crowned the inaugural XGL Winter Champion.

X Games has not yet published a complete winter-specific numerical points table, but the inaugural Summer League demonstrated how close the new format can be, with XC New York winning the championship by just 10 points after three stops.

With four Australians spread across three clubs – ranging from one of the most successful athletes in X Games history in James to 16-year-old Brown at the beginning of her international career – Australia will have a significant presence when the new Winter League gets underway in Aspen in January.