A celebrated Vancouver Island snowboarder took the women's championship title Saturday at the Natural Selection Tour (NST) finals in Revelstoke, which brought 24 of the world's top backcountry boarders to the Interior this month.
Spencer O'Brien of Alert Bay, on Cormorant Island near Port McNeill, surfed out of the Montana Bowl near Revelstoke Mountain Resort on March 15 on top after two days of competition.
She secured the last-chance qualifier Friday, March 14, against Mary Rand of Narragansett, R.I., then on Saturday beat out Elena Hight of Lake Tahoe, Nev., the 2022 NST women's champion who entered this year's finals with the lead women's score.
A five-time X Games slopestyle medalist, O'Brien entered NST this month as a wildcard, pulled off a crowd-pleasing cab 540 in the finals, and won a large chunk of the $130,000 prize fund and a Ski-Doo Summit X.
"The event really provides a space where people want to send it and do their best," O'Brien told NST. "Props to everybody here—it was just such an exceptional show and an amazing week for snowboarding.”
Celebrating the championship with her is Ståle Sandbech of Oslo, Norway, the 2014 Olympic slopestyle silver medalist who won this year's NST men's title. Sandbech narrowly surpassed Revelstoke's Dustin Craven on Saturday and beat out Blake Moller of Edmunds, Colo., who was the 2022 Freeride World Tour champion.
Leading up to the finals, Whistler-based snowboarder Mikey Ciccarelli landed one of two high scores Friday at the Montana Bowl near Revelstoke. He, O'Brien and Craven advanced to the Saturday finals along with nine other athletes, while Whistler's Brin Alexander and Nelson's Estelle Pensiero didn't make the cut.
Ciccarelli, originally from Ancaster, Ont., scored the highest on March 14 at 90, followed by Torgeir Bergrem of Trondheim, Norway, recording 85.6. Ciccarelli won spectators' awe when he pulled off a switch backside 540 with a tweaked melon grab and pillow drop.
He and Hight each earned a $5,000 BOA Dialed-In Award for their top performances Friday.
To watch the livestream recordings from Friday and Saturday, visit redbull.com/NSTsnow2.
