The wait is finally over, Natural Selection is back for its second year and is kicking off this week in iconic Jackson Hole. We wanted to find out more from Travis Rice himself and his thoughts on this year's riders and how they were selected, what his highlight was of last years NST, the newly launched NFT, what changes we can expect and if there will ever be a European stop on the tour.

Article by Tom Kingsnorth.

Firstly, we are all excited for the first stop in Jackson. There’s a whole new crew of riders this season. How hard was the selection process for this year’s crew?
The selection is something that we take 100% seriously and this year was unique because of the Olympic component. We tried to make our event so that Olympians could come because a few really wanted to do both events, but the procedures in China meant that riders had to go a week earlier, so that wasn't possible for some. We have a five-person selection committee, with three people on our Independent, so it's majority independent. We have Matt Barr, Pat Bridges, Mary Walsh and then Liam Griffin, who is the Natural Selection COO, who represents the Natural Selection and then myself as a rogue independent. We probably did 778 conference calls; we share all of the content internally that people put out and many merits are taken into consideration. These range from both lifetime achievements to what they did this past season, contests, videos etc.; everything is valid. So, it is not easy, but we try to get it right.

Which new riders are you especially excited to watch?
There are a lot. Sebbe De Buck is the full wild card. I love it because I don't know what he's going to do and I'm definitely excited to watch him. Also, Arthur Longo was actually invited last year, but he couldn't accept it, so I am excited to see him ride. Then we have Danny Davis and I'm super stoked to see what he does. There's some tenacity to this tour this season. Then on the lady side, we have everyone from Marie-France Roy to Spencer O'Brien and then Cheryl Maas as our last wild card. There are a lot of narratives that are running. I think it's fun to have it as a head-to-head format because it helps do the justice. Being able to chat about each of these individuals keeps it interesting and it's tough if it's glazed over. When the format is drop, drop, drop, as a format, there's no time to actually talk about how people are riding.

I think conditions this year will be sporty and that's the name of the game this season. It's going to be nice and full spectrum different from last year where it was just two feet of pow and everyone's just like, "Sweet, I'm riding pow!". This year is really a case of alright, let's see how you have a leash on the board, let's see how you can control it and I think it's going to separate those who are comfortable in variable conditions.

Is there a rider you definitely do not want to face in the first round?
Like I said earlier, I think it's going to be sporty conditions, so I'm kind of thinking that I would like to face least the couple of riders that are super spry, lightweight and used to riding variable conditions. I mean, Arthur [Longo], the guy's a genius and Torgeir [Bergrem], he's not afraid and doesn't give a fuck, so he will definitely go for it. Gabe Ferguson has a super lightfoot approach, too, and everyone just wants to see him go against his brother. There could be no better opportunity to step out of his brother's shadow and take him down.

What is your favourite location out of the three stops and why?
I don't know if I have a favourite. All of the stops are so dynamic in their own way. Maybe Jackson because we have a full field of riders, so there are more. Although we're planning on having 12 for Canada and Alaska, so basically, the field gets cut in half.

Last year’s Natural Selection got a great response but it wasn’t as planned because of COVID, are there restrictions this year or is everything as planned?
So far, everything is looking to go ahead as planned with no restrictions.

Have you made any changes to the judging criteria or format this year?
Nothing major, the one change that we did was that we had this format for a third tiebreaker run. If rider A won the first heat and rider B won the second, there would be a tiebreaker run. Last year, we only did that for qualifiers and finals, but we will use that format for every round this year. I think 90% of the time, the judges got it right last time, but I think the judging will be a little easier as they have a season under their belt now. This year we have Sandy McDonald, Connor Manning and Chad Otterstrom judging Natural Selection.

What was your highlight of last year’s NST?
I think watching Zoi [Sadowski-Synnott] stomp her last run was probably the highlight for me. Also, another highlight was getting a sat phone call from the glacier after they wrapped up the final in Alaska. I wasn’t there as I was having our baby here in Jackson and I was so freaking stoked to find out it went well and who won!

You planned to make a European stop for Natural Selection but so far that hasn’t happened. Are there any plans to actually do a European stop of the Natural Selection to the future?
Absolutely, 100%. We are working hard, it's been really tough through COVID. I believe we are going to have something amazing over there eventually. We are continuing to speak to several different locations, but I'm not going to lie, European resorts are really hard to deal with as there is just a lot more complexity. Over in the US, one or two companies will own and manage the resort, but it seems in Europe, most places have 15 special interest groups that all own different parts of the mountain. The majority of owners have a very conservative approach. When I went to Europe originally, we had nothing to show. It was just me, a rogue American guy with just this huge idea; now we have something to offer. Everyone we spoke to in Europe was super helpful, honest and respectful and gave it the time of day to discuss it. It was a huge learning experience, it just wasn't the right time back then, but I bet you that we will make this happen.

What were the biggest lessons you learned from last year’s event?
I'll tell you what we learned; it's very difficult to run a tour with three stops in North America during a global pandemic (laughs). But it's also our fucking greatest opportunity to pull off an event when everything else is being shut down. There's opportunity there and you have to look for these opportunities. We're still a small company that loses money every year and that fights above its weight. This year is our ultimate opportunity, with going up against the Olympics and the fact that we're doing an event right before the Olympics and doing our Canadian event right after the Olympics. So even though it's difficult finding sponsorship and some riders had to change their schedules, ultimately, it's all opportunity.

What is something new that we can expect from this year’s NST?
Yeah, I have one more wildcard for you. I have been working on this for the last eight months – my passion project is to bring an NFT program that we are launching for Natural Selection. Usually, NFT's are all about ridiculously overpriced Jpeg's that you read about on the internet. But essentially, an NFT is the same as going from a cassette to CD to mp3; it's a completely new format and will be everywhere and everything in the next ten years. So, we wanted to create a community based around these NFT's that offers a much more dynamic way of following the tour than a regular membership.

On the 25th of January, we will be launching the first NFT competition token for $15. If you were a holder of that, you get access to behind-the-scenes content, such as the maps only the riders receive, extra video content, 3D maps of Jackson etc. and more behind the scenes content that other people won't have access to. Instead of charging people just 15 bucks for this behind-the-scenes content, they actually have an NFT that not only gives them all of that content, but if they decide to sell it afterwards, the NFT could potentially be worth more than it was purchased for. Or maybe you are someone who likes to hold them and collect them, and then that's also a cool thing. It's an experiment, but it's exciting for me to allow this for the first time. We know many people watching won't have NFT's, so we have simplified the process and kept the price low. We've teamed up with Mint Werx, a premier NFT creative and production studio and Vivid Labs, a next-generation NFT publishing platform, to get their expertise and technology to help Natural Selection build this platform. It's my passion project because our goal with Natural Selection is to break even; the tour is not a cash cow for us. We want to build the tour and the long-term community around it and this is a way that we can offer direct interaction with the riders and the community. We will have a Discord page where NFT owners can chat and ask questions directly to the riders. I'm really excited about the program.

You can follow Travis Rice on his Instagram here.
You can also follow Natural Selection on their Instagram here.

You can get all the latest news updates and of course watch the Natural Selection as it happens on Pleasuremag.com, stay tuned for updates.