With qualifiers kicking off today in Aspen for The Snow League Event Three, we caught up with 26-year-old pro Lucas Foster as he got ready to compete earlier in the week. Originally from Telluride, CO and now living in Innsbruck, he is part of the inaugural class of riders hoping to host the Championship Trophy at the end of season one in LAAX. With a 10th-place finish is Aspen last year, he focused while training for the new format this offseason, and is back after the Olympic break, hoping for a solid result in the return to his home state. Enjoy (and tune in to the livestream this weekend in Aspen!).
How funny is it that they show your league earnings in the profile?
Yeah, that is funny. I think you can see on FIS, too. But that one is hard to find, and I don’t even know why they show it.
$10k for the year so far doing death-defying stunts!
And that is just for showing up and riding! The payout over at FIS I think, is like $12k for first, and then they pay down to 10th place or something. I think you’re getting like $400 for 10th… but no appearance fees or any of the stuff like they do at Snow League.
Appearance fees sound nice.
They are!
Well, for this one, we can start basic. How’d you get into snowboarding?
Just through my dad and my mom. My parents are both snowboarders. So it was like our weekend activity since I was born. My dad moved to Telluride in like ’94 to snowboard. Got a bartending job, and that’s what he still does now. He’s 60, works four nights a week and snowboards every day. My mom just kind of snowboarded because my dad was, but she doesn’t really ride much anymore. Luckily for me, they were all about it when I was little.
How’d you get into pipe riding?
I mean, it was kind of just the norm to do everything in USSA. Slope, pipe, slalom, boardercross… I started to focus on halfpipe around 17 or 18 though, because that’s where I started to get some opportunities as far as bigger contest invites. But it was always like a side thing. I did not plan on being a pipe rider at all. I was always trying to pursue slope.
Are you sure you weren’t trying to do boardercross, looks like they had the biggest crowd at the Olympics?
Yeah, it was funny doing boardercross back then because I would do a slope contest on Saturday and then boardercross Sunday. I’d have my tight pants on… but it was 2012, everyone wore tight pants. Jed Anderson was the coolest dude at the time running skinny pants.
Since you competed in it all, what was your take on the Olympics this year?
As a whole? I don’t know. It was really sick to see all my friends, like everybody did their best riding. The pipe, it was great. Judging seemed pretty good in my opinion. Slopestyle… I don’t even know how to put it. I don’t want to insult the riders, but it was a pretty crazy shit show.
What was that experience kind of building up this season?
It is psycho. Qualifying for last Olympics definitely set me up for the last four years riding-wise. It was amazing. I was definitely more of a dark horse to just even make the US team this Olympic round. So just making the team gave me a ton of confidence to ride even at Snow League. I was like, okay, I can qualify. I am riding pretty good. It is just so competitive. It came down to Chase Josey and I battling it out for the last spot for Italy and he beat me in the LAAX finals by like a point. I was bummed on my result, but stoked for Chase.
It is interesting how the Olympics seems to be everyone’s goal. If you were to ask, 95% of the 13-year-olds at the top of the Copper park or pipe, they just want to win the Olympics. Getting to one was big, but there is so much more in snowboarding as well. I’m not down for this kind of the culture that has come from it. All that matters is this four-year cycle? Do we just snowboard to go to the Olympics now? I mean, hopefully, kids will want to compete in the Snow League in future. I’m guessing that is what their eventual goal is.
Snow League does not have any FIS points attached to it for the Olympics, correct?
Some countries use the World Snowboard Points List as a qualifying pathway. So technically yes, but not for FIS. There’s no FIS involvement at all to my knowledge.
Where do you think pipe riding is right now?
It’s stuff that I never thought would be possible in snowboarding. Like, 2010 me wouldn’t want to pursue this. If I saw that this is what you would have to do to be a pro snowboarder right now, I don’t know if it would be as enticing, but as a current competitor that’s in it… it is just crazy to see everyone riding so well.
What’s the major difference between how you have to ride at an FIS or a standard event compared to the Snow League?
I think the biggest one for me that I’ve had to get used to is the endurance that you need. You’re doing six runs a day, which is crazy. It forces you to pick runs that you can have longevity throughout the day. You’re not gonna go in your first heat of the day and do your gnarliest full energy run because you will still be riding the next day in the brackets. Strategy definitely has changed a bit. You can’t really go into it with a master plan like you can at an FIS event when you are competing against the whole field. This one, you could get into a bracket with, you know, some other riders that maybe aren’t that good and you don’t have to really put it all out there. I think that gets really tricky though, in the finals, during the head-to-heads where you have to drop on both walls… that’s where you have to know how to move your run around. You know, you can’t just practice the same exact flow and same exact routine that you were doing in Saas Fe in October. You have to like fully mix it up.
So you like being forced to mix it up?
I mean, it’s good for everybody. It makes it more fun to watch. Like, who can hold their own for the entire event? I remember after the second round last year in Aspen, I was so exhausted and could not to hold on to a landing at all. And then you got Yuto who’s doing 10 runs throughout the day and they’re all A+ gold medal runs.
Do you think that format helps with progression in the pipe?
Yeah, I think so for sure just because you know you will have to switch sides and with the format you need options for trick combinations. Like with Yuto, we’ve always seen Yuto do huge frontside and cab spins and switch backside spins… but I had never seen him do that switch rodeo until he was doing at Snow League… and then he did it at the Olympics. I think he started doing that at Snow League so that he could have a setup hit into his switch backside trick. He probably had it forever ago, but SL opens up the ability to bring different ideas back in. Like a crazy alley-oop trick that you’ve done at Mount Hood on a spring slushy day comes back around to work into a run so you can set up for your banger trick next hit.
What about the NBD that you brought into the pipe?
Yeah, the alley-oop double McTwist wouldn’t have been a trick for me unless I went to this banked slalom with Taylor Gold in Steamboat, and we were doing minipipe laps. He just said we should try alley-oop McTwists. So it’s like, random little shit like that can totally unfold into stuff that will, in Yuto’s case, win a gold at the Olympics. There’s controversy around my trick because there was a Canadian dude that did an alley-oop double-ish McTwist thing in a 16-foot pipe like 20 years ago. I never coined it as McTwist at all, people just called it an NBD. I wouldn’t have personally. I mean I definitely did it first in a contest, but my first real NBD in the pipe was a backside double 16… but that was the year triples came in… and I hand-dragged in the contest haha.
You said before that the Snow League is just more exhausting due to the number of runs. But aren’t you riding in the pipe training a good amount? What makes it so much on that day?
I mean, we’re never really doing those full comp runs in training. You’ll do pieces of it, you’ll do parts of it for sure, but you’re never doing a full-on, every trick 12 and up too often. The level of the tricks these days requires just so much strength. The amount of power you have to have to like get a 14 around is like doing a max squat PR and then you have to do it again immediately. So you kind of have to know when to like pull the trigger and be strategic about it. The mere fact that people aren’t just blowing out every single time is impressive in itself. This summer I trained totally differently off snow for the Snow League as the focus. I mean, after that first event, on like run four, I was fucked.
That’s hilarious.
Watch my last run from the Aspen stop last year. I did the alley-oop double McTwist and landed super deep and usually I can land deep and ride away But I fully just blew up and I knew it coming out. I was like, dude I have no power to hold on to this and just let myself explode. I was like Yeah, just full exhaustion like I whipped it around but there’s no way I’m like staying on my feet.
What do you think about when you’re up in the air doing a huge hit?
I blackout usually. That’s what’s supposed to happen. You take off, and your body knows what to do. Obviously, depending on the trick… but you’re just hoping you land in the pipe and not on the deck. It’s a trip. It really is just reps and reps and reps.
Do you feel very comfortable going into most of these pipes?
I think so, yeah. We haven’t had a new event or a new location in forever. I guess last year we had Corvatsch, which was new for us, but not for slopestyle. Calgary, Aspen, Copper, LAAX is kind of like where you go. I guess even China at this point.
All the Snow League pipes you’ve been competing in for what, the past decade then?
Yeah, for sure.
It’s kind of like everything has a little bit of a home-field feel.
For sure. For Aspen, I still spend so much time in Colorado with all the events and my family is still there. Some of the first USSA contests I did for pipe were in Buttermilk. We would go to Buttermilk and not even get lift tickets because they were expensive and just hike the pipe. And the Aspen pipe is so nice. LAAX is nice, being based out of Innsbruck, because I don’t have to prep for a huge flight or anything, just a train ride. Pretty excited for that one as well.
Does it actually feel different putting on the Snow League jersey compared to your standard bib that’s flapping in the wind?
Yeah, for sure. Those ones are super sick. They’re comfortable and they look good… or at least better than a bib. I’m excited to actually put that one up on a wall eventually. So, yeah, they’re sick.
Anything you want to see improved for Snow League? Not trying to get you in trouble.
Haha all good. They crush it. Right off the bat, it was like, the right people work there. They really hit all the main things on the head, for sure. With the future of halfpipe riding, I know they want to have events in really sick places with big crowds. But those huge crowds aren’t probably going to make it to Genting Resort Secret Garden in China or the pipe in Calgary. I would love to see formats that maybe aren’t 22-foot, five-hit pipes. Like I was telling them, they should try to do like the heavyweight Snow League tour they are doing now, and then maybe two 18-foot pipe events somewhere easier to get to for fans. Like the main stops for Street League and the pop-up events. There’s still some really good 16 and 18-foot pipes where Snow League could totally do some sort of small event. We love riding 18-foot pipes. It’s so fun. But it’s been really sick to have direct communication with everybody there. They do a really good job of including riders with sponsors and giving opportunities to us. I think I’ve made more in two hours of filming a commercial and competing in Snow League thisyear than I’ve made during my entire World Cup career. Feels like they care about us.
If something is wrong with the pipe, have you gone straight up to Shaun White and asked him to fix it?
No haha. I mean, luckily, we can just talk to whoever’s cutting the pipe.
What’s your favorite contest to compete in?
I mean, for sure, Snow League. LAAX open is really fun. X Games is still pretty good when you can get the spot. But having a whole tour is nice so you aren’t just waiting to qualify for one event.
Was there a qualifying process to get into Snow League or was it just invited athletes?
I think for season one it was just the top 20-25 riders on the world points list after the 2024 season. And since we’re technically still in season one, I’m not sure if they’ll change some stuff up, but it’s basically like the top 20 -25 riders in the world get spots for the year.
What’s your favorite pipe to ride in?
LAAX, but I like Aspen a lot too. Aspen is just in the middle, where it’s like fast and full throttle, but not scary. At LAAX, you get going real fast.
I guess to end it, I will just ask how you think the first season of the tour is going?
Great! Every event gets better and the first one was already pretty dope to start with. It feels a little drawn out but that is because of the Olympic break and all that. Next year it’ll feel much more like a full tour that goes by quickly. All of the riders are stoked. I’m interested to see now that the Olympics have passed, I think everyone’s minds are going to be a lot more adjusted to the Snow League format. Just kind of battling one-on-one with riders and trying to throw tricks to keep advancing.
