On October 22, Travis Rice’s Pure Choice Tour (NST) introduced that it might be increasing past snowboarding, including ski and surf occasions to the calendar for 2025. It can even be morphing its partnership with Proving Grounds, a storied mountain bike occasion it teamed up with final season to offer mountain biking occasions as nicely.
As Rice emphasizes, a lot of NST’s success in snowboarding has come from letting athletes cleared the path. He and his crew of athletes and advisors plan to do the identical factor with the brand new occasions.
“We feel Natural Selection has an opportunity to do something very authentic, something very athlete-driven in these other sports,” NST CE Carter Westfall instructed GearJunkie. “From a sustainability standpoint [and] from a business standpoint, a rising tide can lift all boats.”
GearJunkie spoke with Westfall and athletes Sammy Carlson, Casey Brown, and Chris Rasman about what this new evolution of Pure Choice might imply for snowboarding, browsing, and biking — and for the world of motion sports activities at massive.
Increasing Pure Choice Tour Occasions: Snow Bike Ski Surf 2025
Travis Rice on the Pure Choice Tour at Jackson Gap Mountain Resort, Jan. 2022; (photograph/Pure Choice, Pink Bull Content material Pool)
When you’re unfamiliar with NST, likelihood is you’re not a snowboarder. The tour encourages athletes to journey creatively utilizing pure terrain options as an alternative of sculpted takeoffs. Judges use creativity, danger, execution, issue, and general impression to attain athletes. It has turn out to be a spot for Olympic athletes and likewise movie icons to push the game’s limits in a brand new competitors format.
When NST launched in 2021 with its first three-stop tour, it modified what competitions imply for freeride snowboarders. NST has allowed snowboarders to showcase inventive freeride expertise in ways in which they’ll’t put forth on the Olympics or X Video games.
Sammy Carlson, a Revelstoke-based professional freestyle skier, sees the potential for NST to do one thing comparable for snowboarding.
(Photograph/Daniel Stewart, Pure Choice)
“We’ve had similar events take place in the past. K2 Back Nine, Red Bull Cold Rush, and a few other events that were also toeing into this vein of skiing quite early on,” Carlson stated, trying again.
As a substitute of beginning one thing from scratch, although, Carlson believes it makes extra sense for snowboarding to crew up and construct off the momentum and infrastructure NST already has.
“To have the opportunity to partner with [Rice] has definitely been an exciting opportunity,” says Carlson. “I’m stoked to be a part of it. And for backcountry freeride, it’s been long overdue to have an event like this that’s going to showcase skiing at the highest level. That’s the goal here.”
(Photograph/Pure Choice)
‘Mission Critical’: The Pure Choice Advisory Councils
Carlson is now a part of the Pure Choice Tour “Ski Advisory Council.” The council consists of fellow legends Michelle Parker, Chris Benchetler, Kristi Leskinen, Markus Eder, and Candide Thovex.
There are additionally advisory councils for MTB (Casey Brown, Emil Johansson, Carson Storch, and Cam Zink), surf (Rob Machado, Nathan Florence, and two yet-to-be-announced feminine surfers), and snowboarding (Hana Beaman, Chris Rasman, and Robin Van Gyn).
In response to Westfall, the advisory councils are mission-critical for the tour to efficiently department out into these new sports activities.
(Photograph/Neil Kerr, Pure Choice)
“For us, it was important to understand [the opportunity] in these other verticals. Who would want to get behind it and help lead the charge?” Westfall stated. “[Rice] would never want to be seen as a snowboarder trying to do a ski event or a surf event.”
Carlson affirms that this mentality was current from the start. He stated it was clear from an early stage that Rice wished to get the precise folks concerned to symbolize and oversee every class of the competitors.
Athletes ‘Leading the Charge’
Casey Brown, a freeride mountain biker who simply got here off a podium end on the first-ever girls’s Pink Bull Rampage, is an Advisory Council member for NST Bike. She emphasizes that having athletes form this occasion is completely essential.
“You have people that are running events, and they run events really well. But they don’t necessarily have the finger on the pulse of the industry, whereas athletes, we’re in it. We understand what’s going on and what the core of mountain biking is,” Brown stated.
(Photograph/Jason Murray, Pure Choice)
“I think that is one of the most important things to bring into event spaces,” she emphasised. In any other case, the occasion can get overly commercialized, and athletes don’t wish to present up anymore as a result of it isn’t “core,” she stated.
Whichever mountain bikers are invited to take part within the NST Bike occasion, they’re fortunate to have Brown in a management position. She intends to make use of her place to champion athletes and advocate for his or her wants.
For instance of how she plans to form the competitors, Brown stated she hopes to restructure mountain bike occasions to have extra leniency for climate. Pressuring athletes to journey within the wind or in subpar circumstances isn’t good for them and is much less enjoyable for viewers. She factors out they do it for browsing, so it needs to be attainable for mountain biking as nicely.
She’s additionally very eager on assembly all of the athletes’ wants round security and luxury. If they’ll prioritize athletes so that each one they should assume or fear about is driving, Brown is aware of from expertise that they’ll carry out at greater ranges.
Boarders, Skiers, Riders, Surfers: Stronger Collectively
Longtime NST followers would possibly fear that the competitors’s loyalty to snowboarding may very well be diluted by means of this growth. Nevertheless, Chris Rasman — a Canadian snowboarder, backcountry freestyle specialist, NST veteran, and one other advisory council member — isn’t involved within the slightest. He stated he has religion that it’ll stay a precedence for the NST crew it doesn’t matter what.
“This expansion is exciting,” Rasman assures. “It gives these other sports a new type of competitive platform. But NST Snow will remain run by snowboarders, and NST Surf is going to be run by surfers, NST Bike by bikers, and NST Ski by skiers. There will be entirely different teams for each sport, making sure to keep separation, creativity, and independence for each.”
(Photograph/Colin Wiseman, Pure Choice)
Westfall additionally backed that sentiment up. “We’re not taking resources away from snowboarding or looking to cheapen that product,” he stated.
He believes that the easiest way for Pure Choice to develop is to leverage the model and construct a stronger, extra sustainable enterprise throughout parallel sports activities. These communities have an overlap in viewers. He feels {that a} coalition is stronger than a handful of disjointed occasions.
Brown additionally sees the worth in banding collectively. “Having all these sports sort of cross-pollinating each other does wonders,” she says.
Carlson factors out that whether or not you’re taking part in these sports activities or watching them as a fan, there are continuities that translate from the ocean to the mountains and again once more.
“This is where the lines blur. We can all relate, whether you’re on a surfboard, bike, snowboard, or skis. When you see someone ride a nice line, or rip a sick turn, or hit a nice air, everyone can relate to that, especially when you step into a big-mountain environment. I’m really excited for skiing to be a part of that. I can guarantee it’s going to be a crazy show, just like the rest of the events.”
