The Freeride World Tour 2021 Grand Finale at Verbier Xtreme is going down today March 23rd at 08:00 CET.
Due to weather and snow conditions, the competition will be held in the Petit Bec.
Last year, due to the COVID-19, the Grand Finale of the FWT20 in Verbier was canceled.
The 25th anniversary wasn't fully celebrated last year without the competition, so the 25th edition of the Verbier Xtreme is taking place this season.
Since its inception in 1996, the Xtreme has been considered the most prestigious event in the Freeride world.
The competition spawned the Freeride World Tour, the Freeride World Qualifiers, and the Freeride Junior Tour creating an international wave of competitive freeriding.
25 years later, the Verbier Xtreme remains the beating heart of competitive freeriding and the Grande Finale of the Freeride World Tour.
The Freeride World Tour (FWT) is the premier big mountain freeskiing and snowboarding tour in the world, featuring the sport’s top athletes competing in the world’s best mountain resorts. Created in 2008, the FWT became even more global in 2012 following the union of North American-based Freeskiing World Tour, The North Face Masters of Snowboarding, and the European-based Swatch Freeride World Tour. Besides the successful implementation of this truly global FWT, the increase of Freeride World Qualifier (FWQ) and Junior Freeride Tour events in recent years shows that the base of the sport is growing exponentially.
The FWT represents top-level big mountain riding, the most progressive and pure discipline of skiing and snowboarding. Riders use the entire mountain as their canvas, from cliffs, cornices, and chutes to powder fields and trees. FWT events have invitation-only athlete rosters but the full FWQ series allows athletes to compete in 1 to 4-star level events and qualify for the FWT the following season. All FWT competition venues are handpicked for their terrain, as well as their steepness, and offer a wide range of options to those competing.
Last season, as a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the first-ever Verbier Xtreme, the Freeride World Tour Team published the original film from the 1996 inaugural competition on the Bec!
Every year, the elite of Freeride tackle the mythical North Face of the Bec des Rosses, a daunting steep and frighteningly jagged 500m rock-face in the grand finale of the Freeride World Tour. In places, the Bec des Rosses presents 55 degrees of slope. In an upright position, one can almost lean on the face with one's elbow. With steep and narrow couloirs, high rock cliffs, changing snow and terrain, it demands technical skill, great physical conditioning, and a connection with the mountain that only experience can bring.
