Taylor Seaton, Brandon Davis 3rd in new White Festival winch ski/snowboard competition

The Albertville Olympic Hall on Nov. 17-18 brought a different crowd to the stadium that hosted figure skating and speed skating at the 1992 Olympics.

Calling the event “a new rendezvous of winter,” the White Festival took the new popularity of winching tools used by skiers and snowboarders in flat areas and created an entire event around that concept.

Watch the behind the scenes filming of any good ski or snowboard movie to come out in recent years, and you’ll see a lot of athletes using winches to pull them into areas once thought to be un-navigable on skis. Incredible rail slides and wall rides once deemed impossible often ensue.

Avon skier Taylor Seaton at the White Festival ski and snowboard competition in Albertville, France, on Nov. 17. The first-of-its-kind competition brought rail sliding and other freestyle elements into a stadium atmosphere. David Malacrida photo.

The next logical progression following the winching revolution, of course, is to set up an enormous, four-sided snow castle feature inside of a refrigerated stadium, where skiers and snowboarders are pulled in from outside the building by winches at 30 miles per hour.

Going from flat ground to a double backflip off a jump in a stadium full of people suddenly became possible for skiers and snowboarders.

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SKI/SNOWBOARD MERGER

The White Festival attracted top talent from around the world to try out this new format, and organizers seized the opportunity to merge the sports of freeskiing and snowboarding by forcing athletes to form teams of two with one skier and one snowboarder per team.

Six-time X Games gold medalist skier Henrick Harlaut, 2018 Olympic gold medalist Sarah Hoefflin and silver medalist Kyle Mack were among the many decorated athletes to attend.

Avon skier Taylor Seaton was paired up with California snowboarder Brandon Davis, and the two put together a solid grouping of runs. At the end of the competition they were surprised to find themselves third overall and first among Americans.

Brandon Davis prepares to be pulled into the Albertville Olympic Hall on Nov. 17 while teammate Taylor Seaton, of Avon, watches on. Davis and Seaton finished third in the first-of-its-kind competition known as The White Festival. David Malacrida photo.

Both athletes said they were excited for the opportunity to participate in a fun new format.

“I could see this type of competition starting to blow up,” Seaton said. “But the technicalities of putting it on were insane, between the lights and the electric winches which were both human controlled, if they weren’t on point with giving you a good pull on the winch or making sure you had good light on your takeoff and landing I could see it easily becoming a mess. But they managed it really well with very few screwups so I think it went off nice, better than I was expecting honestly.”

LARGE, LOUD CROWD

While snowboarding and freeskiing has been brought into a stadium atmosphere already through the sport of big air, the White Festival added a new level of variety to the indoor atmosphere.

Taylor Seaton performs a blunt grab off a feature at the White Festival Nov. 17, 2018. David Malacrida photo.

With four different winches pulling in athletes from four different directions, the competition was scored on those four runs, which athletes received two attempts at apiece. A total score was added up for both athletes to arrive at the final standings for each team.

“It involved a lot of strategy which was cool, you had to think a lot about what you could do and what you could land on each feature,” Seaton said. “Also, there was strategy in picking a good teammate. I was lucky to get linked up with one of the illest snowboarders out there.”

A day of semifinal competition on Nov. 17 narrowed it down to the Nov. 18 final.

The White Festival brought a large crowd to the Albertville Olympic Hall Nov. 17-18. David Malacrida photo.

Seaton said the crowd was so loud for the finals he found himself momentarily deafened by the noise at times.

“I had never experienced anything like that at a competition,” he said.

Seaton heads to Copper Mountain next for the first World Cup halfpipe competition of the season, the Grand Prix.