Two words can describe the snowboard street event that went down at Winter X Games 15: burly...and sketchy; which when put together equal bad ass.

This past weekend marked the first snowboard street competition to be held at Winter X Games and ultimately came about because of the inaugural video contest, "Real Snow". Seven of the eight riders that competed for a medal by putting together individual video edits also competed in the street event - bringing the urban side of snowboarding to the masses. Nic Sauve, Jeremy Jones, Seth Huot, JP Walker, Joe Sexton, Simon Chamberlain, and Louis-Felix Paradis were dropping in on one of the gnarliest contest set-ups they had ever seen. The riders faced the options of a concrete ledge, a massive yellow pipe, a janky-ass stair set (aka the cheese grater...and personally dubbed by JP Walker as the terror zone) set up with two kinked rails and an intimidating gap to down rail.

If there was pressure, no one could tell at first. The guys were all joking and having a good time - running the same attitude as they would if they were out filming with their own crews. However, Nic Sauve began to up the ante (to say the least) and the motivation to step it up was apparent. After Nic stomped the gap to frontside boardslide on the down rail, the others got the urge to start charging the hard side as well.

Jeremy Jones was going for it; fearlessly spinning into the double kink repeatedly however, never pulled it off. Nonetheless, he was no doubt charging and got the crowd hyped. Joe Sexton seemed to have a smile plastered on his face literally the entire time, even while he was pressing the ledge with all the style that he's known for, and also pumped up the fans. Fellow People crew members, JP Walker and Seth Huot were bringing the heat as usual but weren't getting the points needed to take out Nic Sauve.



Louis-Felix Paradis pulled out a switch 360 to switch 50-50 on the ledge to land in the second and silver medal spot while Simon Chamberlain's gap to nosepress on the double kink scored him the bronze. And last, Nic Sauve who seriously sent it the entire competition stomped a gigantic cab 270 to front board on the down rail and clinched the win and the gold medal.

It was a different feeling from the winners as you could tell that being in the X Games "scene" might have been out of their comfort zone but they were stoked to bring another side of snowboarding to the crowd and represent what they are all about. Hopefully this will inspire more progressive moves in the contest scene in the future.

Congrats to the winners.

Photo courtesy of Snowboarder Magazine/Huggy
Video courtesy of ESPN