The man with the plan. Photo: Chad Chomlack//Red Bull
Back in the fall of 2024, Travis Rice and the Natural Selection Tour surprised us all with the announcement that, on top of its snowboard event, NST would also hold a surf event, a mountain bike event and a ski event in early 2025.
At time of writing, three of those competitions have already happened successfully (with good reviews from online viewers). Both the bike event in New Zealand and surf event in Micronesia aired in February while the snowboard event aired live from Revelstoke last weekend. Now 12 of the world’s best skiers are standing by in Alaska’s Tordrillo mountains for NST Ski that will air “as live” on April 17 on Redbull TV.
I sat down with Travis in Revelstoke to talk about why the NST decided to branch out and check in on how he’s handled it all.
I’m going to hit you with the heavy one right outta the gate. After all these years, what does the NST snowboard event mean to you?
I mean, I think about the time that I’ve spent, and especially because a lot of time you’re unaware of the effort you put into things until you have something like a family that you can measure the sacrifice against…but I think if I use the measuring stick of the time, effort, and brain power that I continue to put into this event, it means a lot. It means a lot to the team of people that put the work in to make this thing happen. It’s such a herculean lift.
It’s never easy. It’s never a given. Sometimes it comes easier than others, but at the end of the day, the reason everyone, myself included, chooses to sacrifice and put the time and effort in is because we all really give a shit and want to leave snowboarding better than we found it.
Yeah, this thing means a lot to Mr. Rice. Photo: Aaron Blatt//Natural Selection
And beyond the snowboarding, with the NST heading into surfing, biking and skiing, now that you’re almost through that whole process, how has that all unfolded for you?
I mean, it’s been a really beautiful process, to be honest. It’s been such a pleasure working with ambassador groups. And this wasn’t that spur of the moment. I mean, we’ve talked about this for years and ultimately a big component for us to circle back to is sustainability.
I think that we had a really strong vision within what we wanted to do with snowboarding, and that’s definitely where it started and where it was fostered. But the reality is endemic snowboarding with a partner or two, we’re not gonna be able to make this event series and continue to put additional resources in it. And that kind of started us down the path of like, all right, how do we build something where our success together can help build this whole thing into something that we want it to become? And ultimately the decision to roll into surf and roll into ski, it came from a similar place where these very beautiful and unique cultures around these different, if you want to call them “verticals,” exist.
And how are you feeling about the ski event?
This is our beta year so we’ve taken a lot of feedback from our athlete ambassador group, which is a group of about five or six skiers. We have Mike Douglas working with us on that program who’s a ski legend, and we’ve got this group that really, really cares about skiing and have committed their lives to skiing and have their own visions and ideas about where skiing is going to go. The last thing we want to do is bring a homogenous element to it and cut, print, cut, copy, paste our format into these other spaces. I think where we find our strengths is that we know what we have to do to put on a great event.
And so we start in a place that is a bit of a copy-paste and build the team and then let it start to nuance and diverge from what we’re doing with snowboarding. Snowboarding and skiing are very similar and I think that down the road there’s ways that they can prop each other up a bit more. But let’s take biking for example. That was over three years ago that we started on the bike journey, and we’ve been working on it since then.
We’ve done several events under the Proving Grounds name, but the whole time it was working towards this fully realized vision of the future of this type of biking. And that’s what we just did in New Zealand, which is truly a Natural Selection Bike, which was to such an incredible level.
And then surf as well. It’s like we have a lot of friends who love to surf and we’ve had these conversations for years on ‘is there a need for this?’ It’s silly to insert yourself where there’s not space, but there was so much enthusiasm about us potentially bringing an event to surfing.
And with all four of them, I think the general, call it like a tagline or whatever, but it’s kind of like leveraging this mutual admiration society to uplift these communities and cultures, which I believe are somewhat underserved on the cultural side of it, just with the loss of the leadership from endemic brands within these spaces as well as the independent events groups.
I mean, both of those sectors have kind of been gutted, essentially, across the board. And so for us to be able to work with athletes and industry veterans within these respective fields to try to reshape what the future of these premier events are, I think that is ultimately where we see finding sustainability in a business model that allows us to continue to reinvest into the events, into the athletes, and especially into these communities. So I guess the short-winded answer is the mentality of rising tide lifts all boats. And the only way, if we look at it from just a snowboarding perspective, we see being able to continue to invest and build up the snowboarding event is with the help of these other endemics. I would say what kind of differentiates us is our goal, first and foremost, is not to be the governing body. I think there’s some great event properties that are fulfilling that role. Like the WSL.
So you’re not taking a run at the WSL and trying to be the new governing body.
No, absolutely not. I think that the WSL is often under-appreciated for the effort that they put in. I mean, they’re doing multiple huge events, like one of our huge events, around the world. It’s super impressive what the WSL does.
Same with Freeride World Tour as the Olympics is now running a freeride event in France in 2030. It’s kind of the same deal with the FWT after it was purchased by FIS, but it’s still run by good people. Nicholas Hale-Woods is still at the helm of it…They are becoming the governing body within freeride…
I don’t want to use compromise as a jab, but there’s certain compromises that they have to make to have equal opportunity for different countries and people to be able to get onto the tour and work towards this Olympic inclusion. I think it’s a great thing. But it’s not something that we’re set up to do. It’s not part of our vision board. It’s a different format altogether. Most of all, together I think we can actually build something sustainable because we weren’t sure if we were going to be able to find it just within snowboarding.
What was it like watching the surf event for you?
Dude, it was so good. Yeah, watching the surf event was incredible because, I think we set out with a pretty tall vision. And going to the wave that we went to, it wasn’t the safe play. It was modeled off of what we were doing in snowboarding where it’s like, we’re not traveling the path of least resistance, probably the opposite. But we’re a bit of a ‘potentials machine.’
We sometimes use that terminology, like a potentials mechanism. And the events that we try to do are set up to support that if conditions align with the venues and the talent, that it has the opportunity to be one of the best events that’s ever been done. And then even beyond that, the runs and lines that are done, or waves that are caught within that event have the ability to be the greatest of someone’s life. That takes a lot of effort to set up and a lot of pre-production, a lot of work, a little bit of luck, some timing and some manifestation.
It reminded me of Boulder Park a little bit.
The surf event? Yeah. It was rugged and it was on the edge. I mean, that surf event, there were mutant monster waves rolling through that — you heard it from some of the best surfers in the world — were some of the most ridiculous waves that they’ve ever seen. And a couple of them were caught, and you heard from a few of the surfers who were like, ‘this is the best wave of my life.’
When Soli Bailey’s saying that…
Which is insane. Yeah, I mean, those guys are incredible at what they do. So I think with the bike event, with what we’re doing this week up here (in Revelstoke), and certainly what we’re set up for in Alaska and what we delivered with on the surf event, I mean, it’s not the path of least resistance, but it is a path of setting up potentials. And that’s our focus. Our focus is not so much on the outcome.
Anything you want to add?
I think the final thing I would add is just our success in what we’re trying to do is so hand-in-hand with the fan base and the people that tune in, because ultimately this thing functions if people think it’s valuable. And the only way people can really show their value is by literally tuning into it and talking to your friends about it. It’s a truly grassroots movement. I think oftentimes it probably from the outside looks like the team that runs it is bigger than it really is. So if you appreciate what we’re trying to do, the best way to give us your vote of confidence is just pay attention. Tune in, enjoy the show.
Tell your friends.
Yeah, tell your friends.
Watch the NST snowboard event here, the surf event here, the bike event here, and the ski event here.
