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Events

Freeride World Tour 2019

The results of the 2019 Freeride World Tour

The 2019 Freeride World Tour has been an absolute banger, with complete domination from Marion Haerty who won 4 out of 5 of the events and Victor De Le Rue for the men who stormed to victory. The tour travels across the planet and plays host to the worlds best freeriders going head to head against up and coming amateurs on the worlds gnarliest runs. The FWT runs concurrently with the Freeride Junior World Tour, in which riders up to the age of 18 can participate and break into the world of Pro Freeriding.

The 2019 tour saw stops in Japan, Austria, USA, Andorra and then finished up in Verbier, Switzerland where the whole thing kicked off in 1996 with the ‘Xtreme Verbier’. Marion Haerty managed to rack up an impressive 4 wins across the tour, only not topping the podium in Hakuba where she clinched bronze. This is Marion’s second time winning the tour and is well deserved after she put down some absolutely insane lines to get to the top spot. Second place went to Russia’s Anna Orlova, and third to Austrian Manuela Mandl, who both killed it over the tour. Full rankings can be found on the FWT website.

PC: Mia Knoll, Wakana Hama

It was a French takeover as Victor de Le Rue topped the scoreboard for the mens event, despite not putting down a winning run in Verbier. American Jonathan Penfield came through with the hottest line of the day, and completely smashed his competition out of the water. Penfield put down the run of a lifetime and ended up 5th overall, almost sneaking in front of fellow American Sammy Leubke. In second place was American Davey Baird, and third was another yank Blake Hamm, for full rankings and results head over to the FWT website.

It’s the biggest world stage for freeriding, and athletes flock from all corners of the globe to participate and compete for the chance to prove their worth. The competition itself is very all or nothing, with the athletes getting no practice runs, the riders are given time to visually scope their line but no actual physical practice occurs. The FWT celebrates the most basic and simple aspects of snowboarding, there’s a start and a finish- best run down wins. No gates, no poles, no timers, it honours the natural terrain and the riders instincts.

Blake Hamm PC: Mia Knoll

“It’s a vertical free-verse poem on the mountain”

The riders are judged by a panel and the judges manual states that “A judge has to ask himself at all times how fast, how big and how much in control a rider is compared to how steep, how exposed and in what snow conditions the action is happening.” Essentially the judges have to look at the bigger picture of the riders line. The riders are further judged on 5 categories- difficulty of line, control, fluidity, jumps and technique. The riders are then given scores out of of 100, and this system is meant to give a unified scoring system across all FWT events.

It was an insane tour with some absolutely massive lines being put down all over the globe, we cannot wait to see how they top this for 2020…

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