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Debate

Why Even A Freeride World Tour Title Won’t Guarantee Success At The Natural Selection Tour

It's possibly the most stacked field in snowboard contest history, but how does an FWT title measure up against the field?

A debate arose, as all good ones do, over dinner last week at my house. The topic was the Natural Selection wild cards, and my roommate, a former U.S. Ski Team ripper who doesn’t miss a Freeride World Tour stream, made a bold claim: “The contest isn’t legit if Sammy Luebke isn’t in it.”

Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s no denying Luebke’s talent—he’s a three-time world champ, a surgically precise big mountain stud, and has represented us Yanks well in international freeride competitions. But while I understood my roommate’s perspective, I disagreed.

“A debate arose, as all good ones do, over dinner last week at my house. The topic was the Natural Selection wild cards”

My argument was twofold. Firstly, the Natural Selection course, which has been doggedly shaped in both summer and winter by tour maestro Travis Rice and a legion of chainsaw-wielding, Verts-stomping builders, places heavy emphasis on backcountry freestyle. Big mountain specialists with freestyle backgrounds like Luebke might do well, but the Natural Selection must cast a wider net than the Freeride World Tour, as slopestyle- and film-focused invitees like Mark McMorris and Blake Paul show promise, too.

Travis Rice inspects the course during the preview for the Natural Selection Tour at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. (Credit: Natural Selection Tour)

Secondly, it wasn’t as if it were just Luebke left out of the conversation. The wild card list was stacked. There’s Jake Blauvelt—equal parts backcountry artist and athlete, with a style sweeter than the grade A maple syrup he waxes into his board each dawn. Manuel Diaz—the first in the southern hemi to break the sound barrier on a snowboard. Ståle Sandbech—pretty sure that man is a card-carrying wizard, Oakley robes and all. The list of worthy wild cards goes on, and if anything, I argued, trimming solid riders from an already mind-bogglingly talented field cranks this event’s legitimacy to eleven.

Shortly after I arrived in Jackson yesterday afternoon to cover the event for Whitelines, Travis Rice summed up the glaring potency of the wild card pool: “It’s comical just in the sense that every person on the wild card list could probably podium at this event.” 2019 Freeride World Tour Champion Victor De Le Rue was a little blunter: “If you look at the wild cards, you’re like, ‘How the fuck are these guys not in?’” he said. “The wild cards could have been the whole competition just by themselves.

Hopefully, in 2022, there’s an opportunity to run a qualifying contest instead of an Instagram wild card roll out, giving wild cards the chance to erase any doubt and earn their spot. “Nobody on that list is not worth having there because they’re all amazing,” commented Luebke on the invited riders in an interview last night. “I would love if there’s an opportunity to be a part of it next year—it’s definitely up my alley.”

“Trimming solid riders from an already mind-bogglingly talented field cranks this event’s legitimacy to eleven”

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.”

The world’s best freestyle and freeride snowboarders go head to head. Jamie Anderson, Marion Haerty, Anna Gasser and Nils Mindnich during the course preview for the Natural Selection Tour at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort(Credit: Natural Selection Tour)

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.”

Victor de Le Rue inspects the course during the preview for the Natural Selection Tour at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort (Credit: Natural Selection Tour)

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”

Is the Natural Selection good for the Freeride World Tour?

Some fret that the Natural Selection will take away viewership from the Freeride World Tour, but I think that’s bull shit. The Natural Selection—arguably the best-hyped event in the history of snowboarding—isn’t just a competition of freeriders. It’s pitting the best of the best in every discipline head-to-head: slopestyle legends like Mark McMorris and Jamie Anderson versus film legends like Travis Rice and Robin Van Gyn versus freeride legends like Victor De Le Rue and Marion Haerty. Legend is one of the most overused words in sports writing, but fuck it, it applies. And when all of these legends collide, the viewership is going to blow the Freeride World Tour out of the water. In the long-term, that’s fantastic for the Freeride World Tour.

“The Natural Selection—arguably the best-hyped event in the history of snowboarding—isn’t just a competition of freeriders. It’s pitting the best of the best in every discipline head-to-head”

Yes, the Natural Selection is obviously more focused on freestyle than the Freeride World Tour—these sculpted jumps are purpose-built for progression—but the importance of more eyes on big mountain riding in general can’t be overstated. Many mainstream snowboarders are going to tune into the event to watch Mark McMorris and Jamie Anderson and get introduced to Nils Mindnich and Marion Haerty in the process. When announcers talk about these riders’ big mountain accomplishments, it’ll be some of the best publicity the Freeride World Tour has ever had. Just like my roommate paying attention to the Natural Selection due to his love of the Freeride World Tour, the Natural Selection can’t help but share some of its shine with the FWT.

“Describing it as a symbiotic relationship is a good way to put it,” said Mindnich, who acknowledged that he likely wouldn’t have received an invite to Natural Selection were it not for his 2020 FWT crown. “I think that freeride will start to see a lot more engagement from our sect of the snowboard community, because you’re pulling viewers and athletes from this pool of snowboarding that really doesn’t cross over too much with the big mountain freeride contests.” Mindnich’s title win came when the Freeride World Tour competition was at its stiffest, with Elias Elhardt, Rüf, and Luebke all in the mix, but he sees that competition only getting stiffer from here on out.

Marion Haerty and Gigi Ruf inspect the course during the preview for the Natural Selection Tour at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort (Credit: Natural Selection Tour)

Rüf, perhaps more qualified than anyone to make a judgement on both tours, mused, “So comparing both, I think they’re really valuable. I hope that the contrast between each will stay, that the Freeride World Tour does not want to follow a trend with what the Natural Selection and what Travis is doing,” he says. “I hope the Freeride World Tour stays on their path—driving freeriding and alpinism—and not turning the wheel around to emphasize more on freestyle, because the riders themselves have to bring that part from what they learned from filming or this event. Then it gets more exciting.”

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, big mountain snowboarding, and snowboard fans in general. More than anything, in this epoch of COVID-catalyzed uncertainty, we’re just damn lucky to have historic events like the Natural Selection going down—to argue about over dinner with skiers, debate on chairlifts with our homies, and wax about on the internet.

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

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