Wintersports
Snowboarding
Travis Rice’s Natural Selection Tour raises the competition bar once again
Norway’s Ståle Sandbech wins on his rookie appearance, while Canadian Spencer O’Brien takes it for the women. Here's what went down at Travis Rice's Natural Selection Tour in Revelstoke.
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Progression took centre stage in the fifth year of the Natural Selection Tour, where snowboarding’s biggest names went head-to-head alongside hungry rookies eager to make their mark. A heavy reset of new snow coated the feature-packed Montana Bowl in the backcountry adjacent to Revelstoke Mountain Resort, setting the perfect stage for it to all go down.
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Qualifiers: Untouched powder and non-stop highlights
Natural Selection Snowboard Day 1 – Revelstoke
24 riders drop into the natural and naturally enhanced venue, where they'll be whittled down to a final 12.
Day one introduced a new qualifying format, designed by Natural Selection Tour founder Travis Rice to push riders to deliver the best runs of their lives – and it delivered. Canadian rookie Brin Alexander set the tone, dropping in first with deep, untouched powder turns to a stylish tweaked melon poke, kicking off two days of nonstop highlights. Qualifiers saw the field of 24 whittled down to 12 featuring stylish freestyle tricks to massive big mountain lines including 2024 NST Champion Mikey Ciccarelli’s confident switch backside 540 and Nils Mindnich’s massive frontside 900. Elena Hight came through fearlessly dropping a 9m (30ft) cliff face and Jared Elston fired up the crowd with a cliff drop backside 360. The action did not stop.
Austrian snowboarding legend Gigi Rüf was on one throughout qualifiers, earning the final spot advancing out of Session One and locking out two NST favorites, two-time NST champion Travis Rice and Bend, Oregon’s Ben Ferguson.
The Revelstoke venue
© Colin Wiseman/Natural Selection Tour
There was no rest for the weary as Friday’s Qualifiers flowed right into Saturday’s Finals with the action moving to the adjacent 'Selector Venue.' This even spicier mountainside saw riders pick through sections with names like Bar Fight and Hell Flute, with two notable cliff faces, The Brick and The Pyramid, as the site of incredible NST action.
The 12 advancing riders picked apart the venue piece by piece, spinning off enhanced features, pointing it through chutes, blasting cliffs and dropping pillow lines to the crowd’s roaring approval.
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Women's final: O’Brien and Hight face off as the snow piles up
Natural Selection Snowboard Day 2 – Revelstoke
On the final day, Mother Nature decides the men’s and women’s 2025 champions and world’s best snowboarders.
The riders battled it out head-to-head culminating in the final round that saw Mother Nature amplifying the snowfall as the four remaining riders raced the incoming storm. In the women’s field, it was a showdown between two accomplished competitors: Canada’s Spencer O’Brien and 2022 NST champ Elena Hight. O’Brien started with a huge Cab 540 up top flowing through her run, Hight answered back with a massive frontside 720.
But it was O’Brien’s top-to-bottom prowess that got the judges’ attention – and Rice’s too, who observed that the NST female competitors stole the show throughout the event, saying, “the women took the attention with a couple of the best lines that I have ever seen in competition.”
Elena Hight's massive frontside 720 wasn't enough for the win
© Chad Chomlack/Natural Selection Tour
The women took the attention with a couple of the best lines that I have ever seen in competition.
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Men's final: Battle of the NST 'rookies'
Blake Moller left the crowd frothing
© Mickey Oshida/Natural Selection
The men’s final heat saw a pair of NST rookies go head to head, but they were no contest rookies – Olympic slopestyle silver medalist, Sandbech, faced off against the American 2022 Freeride World Tour Champion Blake Moller.
Sandbech continued his 540 blitz adding in a transition finder 360 across the lower cliff face. Moller went for a final Hail Mary 720 cliff drop, just missing the landing, but leaving the crowd frothing as the contest came to a close with Sandbech the new men’s 2025 NST champ.
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Results and highlights
Rice and Moller check the lines
© Mickey Oshida/Natural Selection Tour
At the contest’s end, the consensus was that the NST had once again progressed the competitive game, with highlights worthy of a feature release, which can be watched now on-demand and for free on Red Bull TV.
Men’s 2025 Natural Selection podium:
- Ståle Sandbech (NOR)
- Blake Moller (USA)
- Gigi Rüf (AUT)
Women’s 2025 Natural Selection podium:
- Spencer O’Brien (CAN)
- Elena Hight (USA)
- Šárka Pančochová (CZE)
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