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YES. Rival 2021-2022 Women’s Snowboard Review

Tested and selected for our top 100 snowboard products of the year: the YES. Rival

  • Price: £449 / €480 / $480
  • Category: Park + Jib
  • Sizes: 140, 144, 149, 152
  • Flex: 6/10
  • Shape: True Twin
  • Profile: Camber
  • 3D: No
  • Base: Sintered

Why we chose the YES. Rival Snowboard: A newcomer to the YES. women’s lineup that genuinely begs the question “Where the hell has this been all these years?!”

YES. are self-confessed purveyors of rebellious youth, and the all-new Rival sits perfectly with these values. A no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners freestyle weapon designed for ladies with a penchant for ripping, it’s going to tick boxes you didn’t even know you had and is a full-on shake-up for women’s park riding.

“YES. are self-confessed purveyors of rebellious youth, and the all-new Rival sits perfectly with these values”

MORE INFO:
YESNOWBOARDS.COM

Who Is The YES. Rival For?

Frankly, it’s not going to suit anyone who isn’t a pretty experienced rider, and more specifically someone who’s lining up most of the features in the park. However, If that’s your calling, this is your board. Every inch of the Rival snowboard is geared toward pop, performance, power and style by the bucket load.

Shape, Profile and Sidecut

It certainly looks like a modern tool for the park. The blunted outline is coupled with a fully positive, powerful camber, so getting airborne comes as natural for the Rival as spinning does. Granted, this kind of profile isn’t as forgiving at the ends as say, for example, a profile with rockers at the tip and tail, nor does the shape particularly lend itself to much performance away from the park ropes in terms of aiding flotation in powder. Big deal. YES. already cater super well to these corners of the market, and the Rival is unashamedly getting its kicks in the park and from taking freestyle to the rest of the mountain, where it is possibly one of the best performing boards in its class.

That’s also largely down to YES. renowned MidBite technology, which features in the Rival among many of their other freestyle dedicated sticks, and this is where the magic really starts to happen. The sidecut is pulled in between the bindings to create a narrower waist width, flanked by two broader zones in the nose and tail. That increased volume on either side offers a stable and supportive base for flatland trickery, as well as a solid platform for takeoffs and landings. However, it does this while retaining all the manoeuvrability and personality of a much narrower board through the mid-section. And while the RIval is unashamedly built for freestyle rippers with all that pop, edge bite and extra volume in the tips, it’s still more than capable when outside the park ropes.

“Every inch of the Rival snowboard is geared toward pop, performance, power and style by the bucket load”

Construction and Materials

Shape alone doesn’t guarantee performance in the park, however, and the Rival is specced up with all the right components under the hood too. A full poplar wood core, sandwiched with snappy and responsive triax fibreglass layers give the snowboard a smooth, consistent and reactive flex from tip to tail and edge to edge. Keeping the core free of any fancy carbon additives not only keeps the costs down but ensure there’s still enough playfulness in the tip and tail to get your flat land dialled in.

Underneath, a speedy sintered base retains a ton of wax and keeps the board gliding well in all conditions, so you shouldn’t find yourself coming up short on the jump line any time soon.

“The blunted outline is coupled with a fully positive, powerful camber, so getting airborne comes as natural for the Rival as spinning does”

Roundup

The Jackpot has been a long-standing test team favourite here at Whitelines HQ. It was the first board from YES. to introduce their incredibly effective MidBite sidecut, as well as one of the boards that sparked the full-camber park boards revival in the wake of all the hybrid hype. The Rival doesn’t just occupy this same space in the women’s category, it does so with its own unique shape, and a topsheet design from artist Crytal Legoffe that rubber stamps its identity as one of the best looking park boards out there.

Trade Secrets

David Pitschi – Brand Manager, YES. Snowboards

“Like all the boards there is the foreverflex process. The camber on Juliette’s board is not massive but there is a reason for that when she was testing the boards she was only 15 and was like a feather so we needed to make the board with low camber. It’s built purposely for women and not a take me down from a man’s board.”

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