Could this be the best prize in action sports? When I say that I mean ‘is this the best prize that’s been offered’, not ‘is this the best prize ever, that anyone could ever think of?!’

Let me explain, love it or hate it, the X Games is a huge competition and it gets a shit load of coverage. People love watching it and people love reliving it. If you get a chance to go then you’ll be blown away by the whole thing… not literally of course but the statement stands for itself. I wouldn’t ever dream of riding at the X Games but it appears that there’s a chance for me to do so. Not just me, but you lot as well. Yes, you read it right. YOU could ride at the X GAMES! Want to know more? Here goes…

“The competition invites would-be athletes to submit a 60 second video of themselves pulling off their best moves in their chosen discipline – skate street, BMX street and mountain bike slopestyle. The videos will then be judged on talent, performance and style by a team of super judges who are all icons in their sports – BMX’s Mike Escamilla, freestyle mountain bike pioneer Richie Schley and skate’s Steve Caballero.

The six ‘phenom’ finalists per discipline will receive a once-in-a-lifetime all-expenses paid trip to the X Games where they will compete against each other for a chance to have their own video profile produced by Red Bull. For mountain bike slopestyle tricksters, this will be a trip to X Games Munich in June while BMX street and skate street competitors will go to X Games Los Angeles, Calif. USA in August.

Comments Steve Caballero: “Our industry has exploded and there are so many riders working their way up the ranks. Red Bull Phenom is your chance to get noticed!”

The competition is open to non-pros between the ages of 131 and 19. All you have to do to enter is upload your video to YouTube using the key words “Red Bull Phenom” and then submit the video link and other information onto redbullphenom.com.

Full entry details and rules can also be found on the website.

MTB slopestyle entries are open from April 8th to May 20th.
Skate street and BMX street entries are open from April 8th to June 17th.”

Need I say more?! What are you waiting for?!!

Now that said creativity is sometimes lacking and a lot of people, trust me I see it every day, whack a camera on themselves and go for a ride. Nothing wrong with that but a bit of creativity with such a powerful tool goes a long way.

Now with the advances in technology recently we have seen a GoPro that shoots 4K, albeit at a low frame rate, and remote controls becoming a near standard feature for high end POV cameras. This little edit, however, takes things a step further.
If you don’t know Brendan Fairclough then you have either been living under a rock for the last few years or have never witnessed World Cup downhill racing. Anyway, @Brendog_1 is a bit handy on a bike, actually that’s an understatement he is probably the most stylish rider I have ever seen grace the downhill scene. Gracia has style for miles and Steve Smith has all the power and speed you can comprehend on a bicycle but Brendan just has IT. There’s some thing about the guy that makes him a joy to witness riding his velo, and the Scott 11 rider threw down a run in Hafjell, Norway after the main practice session for the last world cup of the year.

The rider’s response to this World Cup virgin track was more than positive, some fun big jumps at the top rough woods sections and a well thought out track made for a solid race. With this in mind, and Brendog known for whipping his way down a good track, Red Bull decided to try out this 360 degree camera on his run with Scott 11 Team mates Floriane Pugin and Noel Niederberger.

The footage is nuts and being able to see all around a riders run is something pretty special! We’ve all seen the helmet and chest mount videos before but this level of engagement gives you something a bit special. With some simple mouse control or arrow keys flicks you can pretty much see everything Brendan does and all the stuff he doesn’t!

Hopefully we will see more of this and putting this type of set up on a bike as well as a rider would give you a cool insight into how a bike and rider interact on a downhill track. Lets hope we see a snow version next! To check out the video and have a go yourself, head over to redbull.com/dowhill360 and try it out for yourself.

Photo: John Wellburn/Red Bull Content Pool

What can I say about Where The Trail Ends? In short, it looks ridiculously amazing. The long version takes up a few more words! For all you snowboarding fans out there, or anyone that has been around the internet over the last couple of years, you can safely say that this is the MTB version of Art of Flight. I know it’s a bold claim but it really is that good.

It’s been in the making for three years thanks to Red Bull Media House and Freeride Entertainment, and it’s touched every corner of the globe. From the Andean foothills of Salta, Argentina, to the Gobi Desert, to the shorelines of BC’s Fraser River and a fair few places in between. With places as unexplored and as picturesque as that, they needed to get some decent riders involved. With Darren Berrecloth, Cameron Zink, Kurt Sorge, James Doerfling, Andreu Lacondeguy and another half dozen of the world’s top freeriders, you can bet your own mother-in-law that the right cast was picked!

But why am I telling you? Well, we’d be pretty stupid not to tell you about the next big movie in snowboarding and action sports, but there’s going to be a live stream so you lot can watch it! If you’ve got some spare time on September 20th at 5.30am CET (I know it’s an early start but it’ll be worth it) then you should tune into the stream and prepare to be gobsmacked.
If you’re feeling like you want to be a little bit more glamorous then you can always head to Las Vegas and join in the premiere there but I’d suggest watching it from the comfort of your own sofa! It’s also going to be repeated all day on the Red Bull site so if you miss it there’s a fall back!

For those of you that haven’t seen the trailer then it’s right here for you:

Now you can catch all the action live from RedBull.com/wherethetrailends

When this was mentioned to me I was wondering who would be called out as the skater that successfully landed this. Your mind runs through the crazier of the skaters out there and then it wanders over to Tony Hawk (he hasn’t landed anything bigger than a 720 for years) and perhaps Shaun White. They’ve been making a mark on the industry for years so it could be one of them…

Nope. It was neither of them. Which isn’t actually too surprising. As I’ve spoken to many people before, the youngsters in our sports are coming through a bit too fast these days so it’s pretty standard practise for something as ridiculous as this to be claimed by a youngster… which it was.
Skating at the MegaRamp at Woodward West in Tehachapi, California was 12-year-old Tom Schaar. With a Red Bull presence helping create the mega ramp (it wouldn’t be something ridiculous without the help of Red Bull!) he takes a few tries to get it down. There’s also another kid trying it as well but seeing as he didn’t land it, he’ll soon be forgotten within the depths of the internet.

Enough of my jabbering though! Here’s the story behind the epic spin from the boy himself.

Tom Schaar 2012 1080

There’s still some time to go before we see the world’s first 1800 in skateboarding. Something we’ve already seen in the ski world from Torin Yater-Wallace.

Red Bull Supernatural is an event that’s been spoken about at Mpora HQ for a while now, mostly about how ridiculously epic it’s going to be. But I just read some news that blew us all away and it should be something that raises your eyebrows too. It turns out that not only will Red Bull Supernatural be one of those events that you don’t forget for a while but it’s going to break out of the proverbial box and bring you something slightly different.

My first warning is that it might be only for you Yanks out there as this pretty much revolves around the screening of the comp on NBC. Don’t take my word as gospel though as I’m sure there are going to be ways to watch NBC in other countries. For everyone that has a smart phone with Shazam, you’ll be pleased to hear that the sports world has teamed up with Shazam to give you the ‘Rider’s Eye View’. But what does that mean exactly?
When the program begins and the riders prepare for their descent of the course, viewers can open the Shazam app on their smart phones and watch the riders riding down the face of a mountain. The TV will show the rider descending but your phone will show you the view that the riders have.

When the app is opened, it will recognise sounds from the broadcast to open up the corresponding video for the users. It’s a smart idea right? Here’s some more info:

What does this mean for our sports though? Is this something that’s going to happen more and more? With the growing popularity of snowboarding and freeskiing, there’s no doubt it’ll be on American TV more, and European, but with an idea like this that will almost certainly take off, we just hope it’s not something that tails off. It’s a great idea for TV broadcast so let’s see how long this one lasts.

I told you I’d keep you updated with what’s going on with the craziest man in the world and I’ve just had some interesting news pop up in my inbox. Turns out that this piece of news really hits home how dangerous Red Bull Stratos actually is. This test flight was all about getting past the death zones and making sure Felix Baumgartner made it back safely.

Funnily enough he took off from Roswell, New Mexico (for all you alien lovers out there) at 9.50am to test out the capsule through the ‘death zone’ and the Armstrong Line. The ‘death zone’ is during the first 1,000 feet of his ascent in which if something were to go wrong he would not be able to escape or open his parachute in time. Luckily, he managed to get past this safely. The Armstrong Line is where the real work begins. This line is an area in aerospace which is inhospitable for humans. Liquids begin to vaporise and temperatures drop to -60 celsius and he would not be able to survive this without a pressurised suit, which seemed to work pretty well!

The ascent and exit went perfectly but Felix did mention that he felt the cold slightly, “I could hardly move my hands. We’re going to have to do some work on that aspect.” He went on to mention that he still needs to work on getting accustomed to the extraordinary dimensions of space. “I wanted to open the parachute after descending for a while but I noticed that I was still at an altitude of 50,000 feet.”

So where does this leave us? Well, after reaching a height of just over 71,500ft, Felix’s test jump couldn’t have gone any better. It’s only a test before he goes all the way up to 23 miles high (121,000ft) but it’s promising and all of the years of planning haven’t gone to waste. The capsule and the balloon acted just like everyone had predicted it would and it’s given the team and Felix added confidence before trying another test flight at 88,500ft.

It wasn’t just a test flight though. Goodness no. Felix also managed to break a record while doing it! He became only the third person to leap from that altitude and survive, with the other two being Russian Eugene Andreev and the Stratos mentor, Joseph Kittinger.

Photo: Stefan Aufscnaiter/RedBull Content Pool

Photo: Jay Naymeth/RedBull Content Pool

Photo: Jorg Mitter/RedBull Content Pool

Photo: Jorg Mitter/RedBull Content Pool

Red Bull Stratos was one of those events that we just couldn’t wait for it to happen. With all of the videos that were released and every image that was sent out, it was an event that was going to blow minds. For those of you that don’t know anything about Red Bull Stratos, read on…

So, in an over simplified way, Red Bull Stratos is essentially one man attempting break the record for the highest ever sky dive. Whilst doing this the crazy person who’s attempting to break this record is going to break the speed of sound upon his extremely fast descent. Sounds crazy right? You’d be correct in agreeing. It is crazy.
The man who is going to be attempting this feat is Felix Baumgartner – certified ‘crazy-enough’ to go through with it and have a stomach that’s stronger than diamonds!

MPORA Action Sports

The reason I’m writing about this now is because we were so excited about it happening that we posted up every video we could find, gave everyone regular updates and then it just went cold. No news was heard and we thought the worst may have happened to Felix during training. There were rumours about not being able to do it in American airspace, rumours that they hadn’t verified where the edge of space was, things like that. We never found out the real reason and we just don’t care because it’s back! Red Bull Stratos is back for 2012!

Mpora HQ received a press release this morning that stated Felix was ready to go, ready to ‘freefall from space’. His jump from 120,000ft is going to be only one of four records that he will be attempting to break (four records are: highest manned balloon flight, free-fall from the highest altitude, first person to hit supersonic speed whilst in free-fall and longest free-fall duration). The tech team from Red Bull have been testing their gear at the Brooks City base in Texas (see video below) and they’ve given it the all clear. There’s only one thing that remains – the jump itself.
They’re planning for the jump to go ahead this year and it seems much more promising after the hiatus of last year so we’re looking forward to seeing some ridiculous video footage!

Red Bull Stratos 2012: Brooks Test

I’ll make sure you get all the updates as soon as I hear anything more!

You may remember a little while ago we showed you the trailer for Travis Rice‘s new epic snowboarding event, ‘Supernatural’. If you don’t remember then check it out on our blog here. If you do remember then this might be interesting news for you as the rider list for the event has been announced and, my god, it looks good.

David Carrier-Porcheron CAN
Devun Walsh CAN
Eero Niemela FIN
Gigi Rüf AUT
Jake Blauvelt USA
John Jackson USA
Kazu Kokubo JPN
Lucas Debari USA
Mark Carter USA
Mark Landvik USA
Nicolas Müller SUI
Eric Jackson USA
Scotty Lago USA
Terje Håkonsen NOR
Travis Rice USA
Wolfgang Nyvelt AUT

It’s a list of the best backcountry freestyle snowboarders in the world so we know it’s going to produce some incredible edits that’s for sure. There are a few names missing at the moment as this is an invited riders list but they might make it on the list owing to a wildcard entry system.

There are two wildcard places at the moment and they will be awarded to whoever is on top of the TTR World Tour rankings (currently Mark McMorris) and whoever wins the gold in the slopestyle at Winter X Games 16. If Mark wins at the X Games then it will go to the silver medalist so the prize for winning has just become even greater!

The riders will be judged on the risk of the line they take, flow, amplitude, creativity, tricks and control. Overall judged scores will look at the riders’ use of the course as a whole, navigating a steep upper tree section, two cliff bands, a 300ft wide jump and a lower powder park section. The riders will be judges by legends of snowboarding – Tom Burt (Head Judge), Andy Hetzel, Temple Cummings, Shin Camps, Bryan Iguchi and Mel Simmons (Assistant Head Judge). All riders will have two runs to make the best score, with the top 8 getting an extra bonus run. The crowned winner will have the highest score from their best run.

Now, down to the important stuff – Can you watch it anywhere? Short answer, no.
It seems that American residents will be able to watch a two hour special on NBC on March 31st but the rest of us won’t get that privilege. I’m sure that within time we will get the odd edit here and there so make sure that you keep your eyes peeled and on Mpora for more updates!

Supernatural. As the dictionary defines it – Pertaining to, or being above or beyond what is natural; unexplainable by natural law or phenomena; abnormal.

When it comes to Travis Rice, supernatural can only be defined as fucking epic. After The Art of Flight everything TRice does from now on is going to be nothing short of spectacular. But what is Red Bull’s Supernatural all about?

Well, it’s the first-of-its-kind backcountry competition designed to challenge the best all around snowboarder on the planet. Travis has grabbed himself a gaggle of lumberjacks (that has to be the title for a group of lumberjacks) and hacked away at a mountain in Baldface. As you’ll see from the video they’ve created some ridiculous features that are ready to be covered in snow, and by this time, they’re probably drowning in the white stuff. So who will be invited to this? Your guess is as good as mine at this point but what we do know is that there will be 18 of the top snowboarders in the world going for the crown.

MPORA Action Sports

Seriously… this looks amazing.

So, after looking through the insanely well done Art of Flight website, there’s a link to head to a Red Bull web page to play the game. It’s a simple game where you control a snowboarder (our guess is it’s modeled on TRice) as he flies down a mountain. You then control his speed and tricks to gain as many points as possible to top the ever changing leaderboard. Like I said, simple game.

Nothing major but I’m wondering what your thoughts are. Is it overkill or just another added bonus to a great snow film?

Play it here