Three Freeride World Tour Champs in the Mix

While the wild cards will have to wait until next year for another shot (aside from perhaps Mary Rand and John Jackson, who are first alternates as voted by you, the people), three of Luebke’s fellow Freeride World Tour champions locked invites to the tour: De Le Rue as well as Nils Mindnich and Marion Haerty. The morning after that dinner table debate, I brought up the conversation with a buddy on the chairlift at my local mountain. We shot the shit and eventually wondered: does Freeride World Tour experience parlay into any sort of competitive advantage at the Natural Selection?

Unlike their slopestyle counterparts, who get to practice ad nauseum on manicured jumps that are virtually the same from contest to contest (don’t @ me), Freeride World Tour competitors are riding blind—even more blind than they are at the Natural Selection, where they were permitted yesterday to walk through certain sections of the course, peer over lips, and inspect landings. “On the world tour, you have to scope your line with binoculars and memorize everything: the trees, the rocks, and everything like that,” said three-time Freeride World Tour champ Marion Haerty. “So that’s good training.”

Another breed of foe the Freeride World Tour champs will face at the Natural Selection: the film rider. While backcountry movie stars have put in their 10,000 hours in powder, they aren’t eliminated from a film project after a single bail—instead, they have the luxury of trying a trick multiple times, moving spots, or just waiting for Ullr to caulk their gaping bomb holes.

“On a video part, you can have so many tries,” said Marion. “You can test the spot before to make the best tricks. In the competition, you have to be the best during one or two runs. You have to be super consistent.”

“Consensus amongst the champions, however, is that experience on the Freeride World Tour is critical to their success at Natural Selection”

Some Freeride World Tour competitors dabble in both the film and competition worlds, like Ultranatural winner and backcountry freestyle pioneer Gigi Rüf. “A lot of times, you hear that filming prepares you to be good at this—it’s like training, basically,” he said. “But that did not really help in the FWT because you really have only a glimpse of the face. And it’s a lot more alpinism involved.”

Consensus amongst the champions, however, is that experience on the Freeride World Tour is critical to their success at Natural Selection. “I think that experience is going to help me because I have been in this situation,” said De Le Rue. “Checking out the course and then the next day going to the top of the line.”

Reigning champ Nils Mindnich agreed. “Coming off the title last year definitely gave me a lot more confidence than had that not been the case. I’m really carrying over a lot of my approach and my tactics,” he divulged. “The tricks and the medium and the terrain are pretty different, but how I psychologically approach the event is going to be the same exact way that I did the freeride event.”

De Le Rue, on the other hand, says his approach is vastly different. On the Freeride World Tour, a single bad contest—hell, a single hand drag or butt check—can soil an otherwise spotless title campaign, so he chooses lines and tricks that he’s confident he can execute. On the Freeride World Tour, he says, “You need to do good all the time. And here we know only the top three will go to Alaska. And you have just all the best riders in the world. So I’m just going to give everything I have and we’ll see where that brings me, because if you play it safe, you have no chance.”

“Regardless of whether or not a Freeride World Tour champion podiums at the Natural Selection, this event is already a major win for big mountain competition”

More Like This:

First Look | Interviews With The Natural Selection Tour Riders

Mastermind | The Travis Rice Interview

Wildcard | The Victor De Le Rue Interview

Triple Crown | The Marion Haerty Interview