Snowboarding
Showcasing the world’s top riders – from Olympians to big mountain film icons – Travis Rice explains why Natural Selection Tour is a snowboard contest unlike any other.
With a format that brings together the stars of film, freeride and freestyle to battle it out in steep and deep natural terrain, Natural Selection Tour may just be the most progressive thing in snowboarding right now. Event founder Travis Rice shares his vision for the ultimate snowboard contest.
With the first stop of the tour less than a week away, how’s everything going in Jackson?
Well, I just got down off the mountain and today was actually pretty monumental. We’d just finished all the work we needed to do on course when a storm rolled in. It’s going to snow hard for three days and we’re happy now to step away and let Mother Nature do her thing.
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Can you give two different pitches for Natural Selection – one for snowboarders who aren't interested in contests and one for someone who’s only seen snowboarding via the X Games?
To start with the first category, I think the beautifully dynamic, full spectrum kind of snowboarding that we’re aspiring to with Natural Selection appeals to fans of backcountry riding and film. When you watch a film part someone’s spent a whole season on, you’re seeing the crème de la crème. For some riders, it takes a lot of tries, a lot of failures to achieve a few successes. But to really see riders going head-to-head in a live scenario… well, you don't get three tries at a trick off a natural feature. So I think one of the most exciting aspects of this event is seeing some of the best backcountry riders in the world going against each other, stomp-for-stomp.
When someone wins a Natural Selection event, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to call that person the best rider in the world
For an audience who only know the contest aspect of snowboarding, I’d want to talk about how hyper-specific contests have become. When someone wins a major halfpipe contest at the Olympics, their title is the best halfpipe rider in the world.
But when someone wins a Natural Selection event, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to call that person the best rider in the world. Because to ride these venues well, it draws on a lifetime of experience. You can draw on it from street, riding transitions in the pipe or doing tricks on a slopestyle course. You can also draw on it from riding backcountry, whether it's how to ride variable snow or how to pick a line, visualise it and then execute.
How has the concept changed since the last Red Bull Ultra Natural event in 2013?
The biggest change is that we’ve switched from an overall ranking to a head-to-head system. With the overall ranked run format, you can’t really remember what people did, so you end up just watching the scoreboard. So now, rider A just has to compete against rider B and the winner progresses to the next round. It's also a best-of-three format, so if each rider wins a run, we have this bonus tie-break round. It’s going to make things very hard for the judges at times, but it will make it more fun for the riders and the viewers.
Holding a contest in steep natural terrain must come with a unique set of challenges. What’s been the biggest?
We have really high aspirations for how we’re going to broadcast a live show. Bringing the kind of technological solutions we want to do, in full winter conditions, is huge. One of the things we’ve done is develop camera drones with world champion drone pilots. These drones have to carry serious technology, from the cameras and lenses we want to use, as well as special gimbals with high quality live broadcast equipment on board.
You've clearly got a great cross section of shredders competing. If you had to pick a winner in Jackson, who would it be?
It's tough to pick just one, I’ll tell you that. But I’m excited to see Victor de le Rue. He’s such a solid rider, so I’m curious to see how he does. On the women’s side, I’m really excited to see how Marion Haerty handles the course. She’s such a dominant rider on the Freeride World Tour, but I think she also have a freestyle background. So I’m looking forward to seeing a different side to her riding in Jackson.
As you mentioned, there will be a women's event as well. What aspects of female riding will shine in this kind of contest, as opposed to more traditional big air/slopestyle formats?
The venue itself is so open to how the competitors want to ride it. Unlike traditional events with set features, our venue is so much bigger, around seven to eight times bigger than a slopestyle course. There are so many more lines to be chosen, so I think the women will be able to ride the way they want to ride and are inspired to ride. Women’s snowboarding has been progressing faster than men’s in recent years, and frankly, the women’s event is what I’m the most excited about.
The Jackson Hole edition of Natural Selection Tour will be broadcast live on Red Bull TV between February 3-9.
