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Snowboard Canada
Jesmond Dubeau claims inaugural Red Bull Crystal at Mont Tremblant
By Dean Seguin
Jesmond Dubeau has been all over the contest scene this winter racking up frequent flyer miles and oversized novelty cheques everywhere he goes. If you haven’t heard of him yet, you will when he rolls into your town and steals all of the contest cash away. That’s exactly what he did at the inaugural Red Bull Crystal event on this year’s leap day at Mont Tremblant, Quebec. He’s now $10,000 richer.
When Red Bull throws an event, there is nothing half-assed about it. They simply own it. From planning to execution, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone that wasn’t outright impressed with the production quality of the Crystal. It seems contests are making a comeback with refreshing, unique concepts and this is certainly one to watch out for if Red Bull decides to roll with it again next year.
The idea behind the event was to bring the natural drops of the backcountry into a freestyle setting. The innovative course design saw two 20-foot drops—one a rail and the other a box—straddle a massive, downright scary jump that dropped 25 feet. A giant screen was embedded into the jump to keep the crowd hyped at the base of Tremblant with a visual teaser of the riders’ descent before they appeared off the lip of one of the three features into the landing zone with gaps of 30 to 70 feet. Next up, riders had lots of speed going into a second feature at the base—a long arced rail with a support structure built of intricately carved ice and lit up with coloured lights. No shortage of eye and ear candy, the event took concert lighting and sound to the next level to create a stimulating event.
After qualifiers, 24 riders went head-to-head with one competitor advancing per heat until it was just Dubeau left standing. He dropped a smooth Backside 7 to beat out the other finalists—Yan Devo, Harrison Gray and Nick Barbe.
“This feels unreal, I’ve been building to win a major contest for a while and now I’ve done it in an insane setting,” Dubeau said. “First time I saw the setup I thought it was too huge, but by the finals I had a huge smile on my face and I stomped my Seven. Rest is history, I’ll definitely be back next year.”
Results
1st Place, $10,000: Jesmond Dubeau, Whistler, BC
2nd Place, $5,000: Yan Devo, Whistler, BC
3rd Place, $2,000 (Tie): Harrison Gray, Newmarket, ON and Nick Barbe, Montreal, QC
