http://mpora.com/videos/viqCB9emd French freerider Xavier de le Rue is fast developing a reputation as one of the world’s best big mountain practitioners. We’ve been getting pretty excited about this guy ever since we saw his parts in Standard Films’ Black Winter and the Relentless movie, Lives of the Artists (which we gave away free on the cover of last month’s mag). He’s also been cropping up regularly in the ‘Making of’ clips from Deeper, that we’ve been running here.
As well as appearing in all these films, Xavier is also a fixture on the freeride contest scene. He’s taken part in most of the Nissan Freeride World Tour stops this year, and shown some pretty impressive skills at all of them. Over the weekend he had a blinder at the penultimate stop in Squaw Valley in the States, winning the event and taking the tour lead.
His second run in a best-of-two-runs format, which you can watch below, is sheer sickness on a stick. There’s a sweet frontside three, some tight turns and a monstrous cliff drop to finish things off.
Xavier said: “The whole event today was quite an occasion. As far as my run goes, I landed switch pretty close to a rock, so I had to do a little half cab on the next roller, but in the end it was all good.” – You can say that again! He slays the shit out of this mountain!