TAE Natural Selection at Baldface, “As Live” 16th March 5pm CET
Snowboarders from throughout the sport—halfpipe and slopestyle competitors, to dedicated big mountain freeriders, and backcountry free stylists–go head-to-head in competition including on the women’s side Hana Beaman (USA) Elena Hight (USA) Marion Haerty (FRA) and Robin Van Gyn (CAN) and for the men Jared Elston (USA), Dustin Craven (CAN), Torstein Horgmo (NOR), Sage Kotsenburg (USA), Ben Ferguson (USA), Mikkel Bang (NOR), Blake Paul (USA) and Travis Rice (USA). At Baldface Lodge, the top half of finishers from Jackson are joined by 2021 YETI Natural Selection at Jackson Hole winners Mark McMorris (CAN) and Zoi Sadowski-Synnott (NZL), who were invited to rejoin the tour following their Olympic bids.
The Scary Cherry venue at Baldface is a freerider’s dream with 80 massive natural and wooden drops, kickers and other features spread throughout the famously powder-coated, 40°-plus slope. Baldface Lodge, set in British Columbia’s Selkirk Mountains outside of Nelson, is a snowboarding mecca with 500+ inches of annual snowfall laid across 32,000 acres of open bowls, peaks and perfectly spaced trees. The winner at the Tour’s second stop will take home a new model year 2022 Ski-Doo.
The nine men, who qualified for the second stop in BC, compete in a two-run quarterfinal, where the best run counts. The top four high scoring men’s runs advance to head-to-head semifinals and then finals in a two-run heat with the best run winning it. The five women will head straight to semifinals with the two women with the top two highest scoring runs, advancing to finals for a head-to-head matchup, where best run wins. The top four overall scoring women and top eight scoring men at the Tour’s second stop, the TAE Natural Selection at Baldface, will head north to the Tour’s final stop in Alaska that will debut in mid-April.
Judges, Sandy MacDonald (CAN), Chad Otterstrom (USA) and Connor Manning (USA), score the runs in real time using “CREDO” that was created by the Tour’s COO Liam Griffin.
CREDO focuses on: creativity, risk, execution, difficulty and overall flow, speed and control. These five criteria will be used throughout the Tour to evaluate a run from top to bottom in its entirety. Each run is scored from 0-100 with an emphasis on the whole run and recognizing what tricks are being performed at the highest standards for that specific heat or round.
New for 2022, the Natural Selection Tour will be using a Triple Crown-style format to determine the overall Tour Champion. In this format, each stop of the Tour will have equal weighting and a stand-alone winner. The points will be tallied by finish at each stop: first place = 1 point; second place = 2 points; third place = 3 points. The rider with the lowest score at the conclusion of the three stops will be the overall Natural Selection Tour Champion. So hypothetically, if a competitor places third in Jackson, first in BC, and fifth in AK that rider’s final combined score would be nine (3+1+5). If a tie happens, the Championship tie-breaker is based on which rider had the better finish in the final event in Alaska.