UPDATE (Feb 28): The snowboarding portion of the event was canceled due to wind, inclement weather, and issues with the jump. We will update when we hear about more events in the future.
Will snowboarding go the way of golf and soccer? Swap out the FIS for LIV and get a nice influx of cold hard cash from the Middle East like a few other sports in recent headlines? Only time will tell, but riders have officially landed in Saudi Arabia for an upcoming big air contest with a prize purse not heard of in recent years in North America. $50,000 is up for grabs for the first place spot, with $30,000 for second and $20,000 for third at the Snowblast KSA Cup being held outside on a scaffolding jump in the Al Malqa area in Riyadh, the largest city and capital of the country. There isn’t a ton of info on Riyadh Season, but it looks like it is a three-day festival, with the contest going down on Feb 28, and we have heard rumors there will be more in the future.
The current invite list has Olympic and X Games gold medalists all over it. That is not a guarantee they will be in attendance, but it sounds like a good portion are making their way over.
- Nicolas Huber
- Mons Røisland
- Sven Thorgren
- Su Yiming
- Ryoma Kimata
- Chris Corning
- Leon Vockensperger
- Red Gerard
- Luke Winkelmann
- Brock Crouch
- Jake Canter
- Hiroaki Kunitake
- Taiga Hasegawa
- Enzo Valax
- Takeru Otsuka
Notably, there are no women on the list. We have not seen any of the official documents related to the event, and aren’t sure if there will be any competing or not. None of the women riders we talked to had received an invite though. Obviously, that would be a sad state for the Saudi Arabian people to miss out on arguably the most exciting riding going on right now in Big Air snowboarding, but that might still be coming. Riyadh Golf Club just hosted the Saudi Ladies International tournament with a 5 million dollar prize attached earlier this month featuring professional women from all over the world. We aren’t foreign affairs experts or really know anything besides snowboarding, so we will see how that shakes out.
We DO know that the internet currently states that alcohol is outlawed in the country, so whoever snags the $50k purse will probably be celebrating in a slightly different way for this one. And we have not found a live stream yet so until we hear back from somebody on the ground on who won, we will be just as much in the dark as everyone else. Arbor Snowboards are made in Dubai, which is just one country and 800ish miles away so maybe we can get a VPN through them. Hopefully, if there are more in the future, we can go see what a snowboard contest in 82°f weather looks like and women will have a chance to compete for the new international prize purse.
