Texas Motor Speedway president Eddie Gossage has never been one to shy away from trying something new at his track.
He's hoping that something new is hosting the summer X Games in 2014.
The track signed a letter of intent to bid on hosting the event starting in the summer of 2014. TMS is one of 13 cities or venues that are trying to win the rights to host the summer event.
"There's tough competition but we've got a few things that others don't have," said the always confident Gossage.
The No. 1 thing TMS has on its side is that it's done homework. Gossage and his staff were at the X Games last summer in Los Angeles and Gossage went to every event. He's confident his track can host all sporting aspects of the event and other areas nearby could handle the lifestyle events that go along with the ESPN-run affair.
"I know none of the other staffs for these others bidders were there," Gossage said. "We've got about 125 full-time employees whose only job is to put on huge mega events. These are much bigger events that we put on here than a basketball game or football game. These X Games are the Olympics for young people. Each city has put together a host committee. That's all our people do so our staff has expertise that a lot of these people can't match. Certainly we have a venue that can host all the events."
TMS is the largest sporting facility in Texas. It has more than 138,000 seats and sits on 1,500 acres.
Bids from each city are due in April and the winner will be announced soon after that. That would give Gossage and his staff more than a year to prepare for the event, which would take place sometime following the normal June IndyCar Series race at the track.
"We've got plenty of time to do it between the IndyCar race in June and the NASCAR race in November," Gossage said. "I don't think timing would be an issue for us at all."
Other cities competing for the summer event include Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Long Beach, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Pasadena and Montreal.
