A drone shot of the Red Bull Features Cup course, which starts with a banked slalom run at the top. Photo: Red Bull
Take a look around the competitive landscape of snowboarding and plenty of people are trying to shake things up. The Snow League immediately comes to mind — snowboarding and freeskiing’s first ever season-long series. The X Games are following suit after wrapping up Winter X in Aspen earlier this year. They’ll soon transition to X Games League, another year-round series, but injecting a team format with competing franchises based in major cities (New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, São Paulo). Back in 2022, Red Bull revived Heavy Metal, an old street snowboarding event that had been on hiatus for nearly two decades. It was a novel return coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic that has grown into an event that drew an estimated 25,000 spectators to downtown Boston this year.
It’s not clear how ambitious Red Bull’s vision for this new concept is, but the Red Bull Features Cup certainly fits the trend of introducing a new team-based competition to the fold. The brand announced it just held its inaugural Features Cup earlier last week in Norway.
The contest pitted three teams against one another with riders organized by their home region: Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific. What’s clearly different about the event is the use of four different zones piecing together one giant course. There was a banked slalom, a rail, a quarterpipe, and a jump. Teams log a cumulative time through the slalom course over two different runs. One run is done on a regular snowboard, the other on mini boards. Penalties are given for missing a gate, and judges award time reductions for landing tricks. The strategy here, for example, comes with the risk of losing time if you fall attempting a trick. The rail jam requires riders to incorporate specific tricks on the fly, which were determined by a spin wheel during the session. Teams could then attempt synchronized doubles riders on the quarterpipe. And then there was the final jump.
Mini snowboards are snowboards too… Photo: Red Bull
Team Asia-Pacific took first in the final standings, followed by North America, and then Europe.
The format is clearly more novelty than high-pressure competition, but Red Bull emphasized that riders enjoyed the opportunity for friendly comp and a bit of team building on their roster.
“This was super refreshing, it’s what snowboarding is about,” said Asia-Pacific Team Captain Cool Wakushima. “Riding with your friends, meeting new people who love snowboarding…it was just such a good vibe. I had so much fun these last two days. Honestly, I’m just super stoked.”
