Mark McMorris, in a scary wipeout during the Natural Selection Tour, Tordrillo event.
“Don’t scare the judges!” was the main rule we followed when I judged an entry level freeride ski and snowboard contest a few years ago. Of course “entry level” is the operative terminology there. Just about anyone could sign up. So if you cartwheeled above exposure and the panel thought you were done for, we’d make sure you didn’t advance into the next round.
Now when it comes to the Freeride World Tour, the Natural Selection Tour, the WSL Championship Tour and every other top tier contest that’s evaluated by a panel of your peers, you’ve qualified to be there. So scaring the judges doesn’t necessarily mean you’d be better off spectating.
But what about falling? Whether it scares everyone or not? How should a full loss of control factor into your overall score? What about a minor bobble? Should you still be able to win if you wipe out?
These are the questions that make judging so damn difficult. And no matter which way the panel calls it, there will always be a host of people who disagree.
“Well, it depends on the other runs, but we dock quite a lot for control. It’s one of the main criteria,” says Laurent Gauthier, one of four judges on the Freeride World Tour and a former competitor. “I mean if it’s a really spectacular run, like a really high line score, and there’s a little buttcheck, you could definitely still podium. But if it’s a full crash, you probably won’t podium.”
And while the FWT has been the high standard for judged freeride competitions throughout the 2000s and 2010s, The Natural Selection Tour follows similar criteria, but is also a product of the snowboard community from which it was born.
“What’s a better video part, like who would have Opener and who would have Ender?” are the questions that guide Jody Wachniak’s judging style. Jody’s one of the five judges who sat on the panel for the Natural Selection Tour this last winter. He also hosts the Airtime Podcast and is a card-carrying member of Whistler’s Manboys crew who’s known for putting out his own face-melting movie parts.
“In this community of professional snowboarding, skateboarding and surfing, we all grew up watching videos, so it’s really easy to communicate to the riders. Opener is exciting; it doesn’t mean you had a bad run, you’re opening the movie. But Ender is the Holy Grail.”
So how do falls factor into that mindset?
“If someone took a bobble and a little fall on a butter but in the middle of the run did a really sick front[side 360] melon and tweaked the melon all crazy, it’s like ‘screw that one fall, that front three melon was amazing! That was a CLIP and it got me excited’,” explains Wachniak.
“But if someone rides down the whole mountain and they’re just turning and there’s flow but there’s no risk and there’s just nothing that grabs you, it’s like ‘yeah that was a fun run but none of that would make it into a video part’.”
As is the case with any judged event, last season, the NST panel has came under fire from pitchfork-wielding internet commentators for making calls that split the spectating populace.
“The Dustin [Craven]-Travis [Rice] one at Revelstoke was the one that kinda made me lose some sleep,” explains Wachniak in reference to the event in March last winter. “I’m not even gonna say where all the judges stood and where I stood on that. But when it’s such a 50/50 run and there’s beauty in both of them and it’s kind of a coin toss, I can lose some sleep over that. But I guess that’s why I’m judging. That’s what [The NST] wants probably.”
“I was getting text messages like ‘Jody you gotta get the hell outta Revy, I hope you didn’t drive there, your tires are gonna get slashed,’” he goes on, laughing. “And it’s all my friends from Revelstoke, like the Wasted Youth crew, but people get passionate about these things and that’s what makes this event special is that people care about snowboarding and they wanna see the right people win.”
In that particular heat, neither rider had a fall that constituted a full loss of control on their higher-scoring runs (only the riders’ highest-scoring run out of two is counted in each NST heat). Dustin was stopped by an uphill landing mid pillow line and took a few seconds to regain his momentum whereas Travis washed out after a backflip but never really lost his trajectory down the fall line. So how does the panel make the call when it’s that close?
“You gotta be running odd numbers because there were a couple times where two guys were on one side and three guys were on the other,” explains Wachniak. “And then you’re like ‘OK, we have to move forward here, everybody got the job for a reason. Three to two, we live in a democracy, let’s move forward.’”
The FWT works on the democratic system as well, but with a slight twist to accommodate both ski and snowboard categories.
“We’re four judges. Three judges are the panel and there’s one head judge who just looks over the scores and makes sure they all match,” explains Gauthier. “Out of the four of us there are two skiers and two snowboarders. So for skiing two of us skiers are judging with one snowboarder, and the other snowboarder is the head judge and it’s the opposite for snowboarding; two snowboarders and one skier are scoring and I’m the head judge looking over and making sure everything works.”
At the final stop of the Natural Selection Tour this year in Alaska, judges were presented with another difficult task in the men’s final. Neither Mikkel Bang nor Travis Rice put down the run they wanted to and the judges were left determining the severity of each riders’ respective bobbles.
“Yeah, there’s different falls – like there’s a dead fall where maybe your goggles fall off – those will change the flow of the run but like a quick flip over the nose where you keep going, we don’t take those as seriously,” explains Wachniak.
There’s also what the NST riders like to call a “Kootenay Stomp,” which is essentially a buttslam, and Wachniak admits that – depending on the judges’ angle – falls like those can be hard to detect.
But that’s not quite what went down in the NST final (watch it here at the 3:21 mark, or above). In the end, Travis literally limped away with the win after an insanely long day of battle that started with a nasty fall in the quarters that left him coughing up blood. And as fun as it would be to say there’s a conspiracy whereupon Travis will always win because The NST is his own contest, it’s just not the case.
“When you’re watching him live against other riders it’s pretty undeniable that there’s a skill set there. He’s one of the greats for a reason,” says Wachniak, but then adds with a laugh: “I’m rootin’ for someone else to win this year though…Sorry Travis!”
Surf judging is a whole other topic (and article) but it’s worth a quick mention here. WCT athletes will obviously do better if they stay on their feet, especially at a venue like Margaret River’s Main Break where so much of the score rides on the finishing move. But you can still post a high score if you’ve put in good work before falling at the end of your wave.
And then there are the big wave competitions, the judging of which has historically come under fire from surfer Albee Layer (and others) for rewarding incomplete rides. In short, Layer argues that dishing out high scores for commitment alone promotes recklessness.
He’s definitely got a point, and it applies not just to big wave surfing but any contest where death is a very real possibility. That’s certainly the case on the FWT, where competitors have actually perished mid-competition in qualifier events. And fatal consequences are in play on the NST as well.
All the competitors know this, and the judges do too. But that’s why they’re in the positions that they are while the rest of us are left to sit behind the safety of our keyboards and toss misguided opinions into the internet gulag.
“People who don’t ride backcountry or who haven’t filmed in the backcountry maybe aren’t the best judges in the backcountry,” states Wachniak. “Unless you’ve been out in the field, it’s pretty hard to tell someone what’s it like to be in the field.”
