Travis Rice’s Natural Selection Tour kicked off its first stop of the year this week in Jackson Hole. Finals are today, and we couldn’t be more hyped to catch the action. Check out what each snowboarder is riding right here.
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Seven of the world’s best snowboarders are having a showdown in Alaska. Photo: Redbull
You heard me right. Today, Friday, April 16 at 12 p.m. PST, the finals of the inaugural Natural Selection Tour will air on Red Bull TV, and you can catch all the action there, or tune in below.
Seven of the world’s best snowboarders went head to head at Tordrillo Mountain Lodge in Alaska to determine the best all-mountain male and female riders. The contest ran over the course of two days, with a semifinals and a finals going off in relative secrecy. The Natural Selection Alaska production wasn’t a live feed, as in Jackson Hole.
If you’re tuned into the core snowboard community, you know the value of a proper switch method and from the moment Mikkel Bang took the win over Pat Moore in the Quarterfinals with a switch Method, one thing was abundantly clear Natural Selection is a competition for your favorite snowboarder’s favorite snowboarder.
The judging might have had the masses scratching its collective head here and there, trying to decipher trick differences and what constituted a stomp, those sorts of details, but in the end, most of it made perfect sense, and the finals day went down flawlessly.
The men’s quarterfinals kicked off the day with matchups that couldn’t have been better on paper Austen Sweetin vs. Blake Paul, Ben Ferguson taking on Sage Kotsenburg, Mikkel Bang and Pat Moore facing off, and two riders who may go down as G.O.A.T’s, Mark McMorris and Travis Rice going head to head.