Kiwi Zoi Sadowski-Synnott has conquered the "psycho" mountain face of the Coliseum in Alaska to take home the Natural Selection Tour (NST) overall title and claim her place as the best female all-round snowboarder in the world.
The Olympic champion has won every stage on the three-stop tour this year to win her first overall title, overcoming last year’s champion Elena Hight in the final.
The NST is the brain child of snowboarding trailblazer Travis Rice, who won his second consecutive male title this year.
Known for pushing his own limits, the 40-year-old wanted to push competitive snowboarding into a new realm - taking the world’s best riders out of the controlled environment of resort parks and onto the wild faces of the gnarliest mountains in the world.
The final stop on the tour was an epic affair, with eight men and four women going head-to-head from sunup to sundown, taking multiple descents in the Chugach Mountains, just outside of Valdez.
Sadowski-Synnott had to master a face of over 300 metres in the women’s semi-finals, overcoming fellow slopestyle rider American Hailey Langland to advance to the final.
This is where things got real for the Kiwi - the mountain face bigger, the slope steeper and facing one of the most prominent backcountry snowboarders on Earth.
Hight, the defending champion with over two decades of competition experience, dropped first and set the bar high with stomped cliff drops and a solid 360.
Any other rider may have let the pressure and exhaustion beat them at this point, but Sadowski-Synnott is a champion for good reason.
Taking better lines and landing a massive frontside 360 of her own, she took the win by one point.
"It feels pretty insane to win the Alaska stop," she said.
The Kiwi snowboard sensation delivered at the Coliseum in Alaska. (Source: 1News)
"I’ve never been super stoked on my Alaska riding so I’m super, super happy to win and of course I look back and want to do it differently, ride different lines but that’s the beauty of it. You always want more."
It’s hard to imagine the Supreme Halberg Award winner can manage much more but Sadowski Synnott wants it.
"Juggling slopestyle and big air and also competing in big mountain is a lot to do in a season, but returning to Natural Selection is one of my number one goals for next year."
SHARE ME