Now Streaming: Natural Selection Proving Grounds Hour-Long Broadcast

PRESS RELEASE: Natural Selection Proving Grounds

The Natural Selection Proving Grounds Super Finals featured a stacked field of the world’s 30 best men and women in freeride mountain biking linking creative lines through massive wooden features and prime dirt jumps, gaps and berms. A one-hour show produced by Natural Selection and Freeride Entertainment under the lens of the Natural Selection Tour’s signature, Emmy-nominated racing drone POV angle flown by Gab707 (DRL) will also stream for free on YouTube.com/NaturalSelectionTour starting Friday, September 23 at noon PT. The show will broadcast nationwide on ESPN2 this Sunday, September 25 at 3PM PT.

Rheeder arrived at the venue this week to support girlfriend Casey Brown, and seeing the course decided to enter as a wild card, notably in his first contest appearance in nearly three years. Rheeder qualified in first. He put it down on his first run in the Super Finals, earning the top score of 93.25.

Rheeder shared that he now has different goals coming into competitions, “It’s me against myself. Today I battled myself and I won. And it happened to win the contest—which is sick. But I wasn’t prepared to go and try to battle it out.” He added, “Seeing everyone again and seeing freeride mountain biking right now, all the spectators, everyone here—that’s the most important thing and that’s the reason I came, so the win, that’s the cherry on top of the whole experience.” Rheeder also had enthusiasm for his single crown fork, “Now I get to implement the riding I used to do in slopestyle here on a freeride bike and it’s super exciting. It’s like the most exciting thing to take all that experience and knowledge and put it into this new thing, which is Proving Grounds.”

In the women’s field, last year’s winner Camila Noguiera returned confident and ready to go big. She left it all on the course, tackling huge features from top-to-bottom and earning the claim as the lone woman to hit the 26-foot Bomber Drop at the bottom. “I wanted to do something gnarly and was looking for the last big drop. I’m strong and can do big things and that’s what I did. My focus was on doing a huge line with the biggest features.” She earned the top women’s score of 82.75 and the i9 Heart & Soul Award.

This is the first bike event under the newly-formed Natural Selection Tour and Proving Grounds partnership. Travis Rice, professional snowboarder and Natural Selection Tour co-founder says, “There are a lot of parallels to what led us to create Natural Selection Tour including a need from the riders, the industry and culture. With Todd Barber at the lead, we decided to partner with Proving Grounds because we see incredible potential for what this event is and what it can be.” Rice adds, “Today was completely incredible, and ultimately we are just here to support this event and the riders, and appreciate that working together we all have better chances to succeed in realizing the vision for the future.”