Well, it’s officially happened. After years of other action sports craving a piece of Natural Selection Tour’s unique brand of competition, the crew at NST just announced its expansion into skiing, surfing and mountain biking. That’s a lot to take in. Launching new events in any of those spaces would be newsworthy, but all three? It borders on crazy talk. Of course, this is the NST we’re talking about, which means they’ve got the stones to think big and the talent to bring the vision to reality. The crew’s got a good track record of putting their money where their mouth is.
That being said, this is kind of a big deal. So how’s it all gonna look?
Skiing should be any easy transition for the crew. The event’s scheduled to take place this April in Alaska and, as we know, the NST team has the experience to not only run successful events in the Alaskan backcountry, but also to deliver high-quality broadcasts documenting the competition.
There’s no word as of yet as to whether or not the broadcast will be live. Either way, it doesn’t really matter whether the athletes are on two sticks or one, because the logistical infrastructure is already in place.
Also, it doesn’t hurt that they’ve brought in some of skiing’s greatest visionaries to make it happen. According to the press release. “Michelle Parker, Chris Benchetler, Kristi Leskinen, Markus Eder, Candide Thovex, and Sammy Carlson are at the current helm for NST Ski.”
With heavy hitters across multiple disciplines steering the ship, Natural Selection Ski could actually be pretty rad, even if it has the potential to alienate the pettier demographic within snowboarding’s core.
Throwing a mountain biking event is also within the NST’s wheelhouse, especially since Natural Selection Bike builds upon Todd Barber’s Oregon-based Proving Grounds, an established event that’s already under the NST umbrella. The new event will take place in Queenstown, New Zealand, which is an absolute Mecca for mountain biking that blends Big Mountain, Downhill, Freeride and Slopestyle, on what organizers are calling a “dream venue.”
Again, NST has come correct with riders who lend credit to the event.
“The inaugural NST Bike Advisory Council will include Casey Brown, Emil Johansson, Carson Storch, and Cam Zink.”
Now, the surf element could be more complicated, though it might certainly benefit from the growing, widespread disenchantment with the WSL. The event promises to pit some of the world’s best surfers against one another in “waves of consequence” somewhere in Micronesia in February 2025. The WSL’s inaugural Surf Abu Dhabi Pro is set to run from February 14-16, so whether Natural Selection Surf will feature riders from the tour is yet to be seen (and if WSL surfers would even be contractually allowed to participate). But it’s hard to find two surfers more universally loved than the ones NST chose for its surf council: Rob Machado and Nathan Florence (the two female surfers are yet to be announced). So surf fans will definitely make time to tune into the action.
Make absolutely no mistake about it: The Championship Tour and subsequent qualifying events like the Challenger Series and Qualifying Series are absolute behemoths to pull off, requiring world-wide staffing and loads (and loads) of cash. But at this point, we’re dealing with a standalone event. Watching freesurfers compete like Clay Marzo, Mason Ho, Ivan Florence, Laura Enever and Steph Gilmore (now) would be fun in almost any good wave the NST could come up with (see Padang Padang Cup). So we’ll just have to see what happens. This obviously, will be the toughest event to knock out of the park.
“I’ve been a fan of Natural Selection snowboard events since the beginning. Surfing at its purest is a dance with nature, and this event will capture that energy perfectly. I’m looking forward to seeing a unique mix of surfers come together on one special wave in fun, yet consequential conditions. It should be a moment to remember,” says Machado.
With all this talk of new events, what’s gonna happen with snowboarding, the sport that inspired Natural Selection in the first place? The tour looks much the same this year, with a couple tweaks. The Duels will run in the months leading up to the mid-March competition window in Revelstoke. But this year, both days of competition will happen on the venue just outside the boundary at Revelstoke Mountain Resort (instead of the finals happening at a heli-accessed venue) which will allow the NST crew to do a live broadcast of the entire event.
So not much change on the snowboard front. But I suppose if it ain’t broke, there’s no sense fixin’ it.
It will be an interesting year to see how the rest of these events shake out.
Read the entire press release from NST, here.