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Rice Triumphs at Supernatural

Travis Rice once again underlined his incredible talent when he won the first Red Bull Supernatural backcountry freestyle competition - his own brainchild.

The event, held this past weekend in Nelson, British Columbia, took snowboarders outside of the confines of traditional slopestyle or halfpipe competition and sent them soaring on a course designed to show off and test each athlete's strength in various disciplines of the sport.

The field featured 18 big mountain freestyle athletes, including X Games double gold medalist Mark McMorris and Norwegian star Terje Haakonsen.

The Supernatural course at Baldface Lodge has more than 80 hand-made log features built on a 50-degree slope. It includes jumps, slide rails and crow's nest-style platforms, some as tall as 20 feet.

"Snowboarding events for the last 30 years are a precursor to what the Supernatural aspires to be," said Rice, who designed the course.

"Halfpipes got better, slopestyle courses became what they are, big mountain riding has progressed. But they're all a bit broken up. Supernatural is designed to bring all of these elements that these core snowboarders have spent their life trying to master and puts it into one run.

"It calls upon all necessary skills; the ability to ride natural terrain, to navigate down big mountain lines, to ride powder, pillows and adverse, crazy obstacles. Most importantly the course will call on one's freestyle knowledge and experience forcing riders to integrate that into one's all-mountain riding.

No competitor was allowed to ride the 2200-feet run before the event.

"It is so different than the X Games and other contests," 2010 Olympic halfpipe bronze medalist Scotty Lago said. "As a competitor, one of the main differences is that there's no practice. You only get two runs, and that makes it definitely challenging."

When it came down to the real action, Rice showed why he is the master of the mountain, completing a nearly flawless run that earned him a score of 91. No one else came close; even second-place finisher Gigi Ruf could do no better than 84, while Nicholas Muller took third with a score of 82.6.

Check out some of the incredible action here: