Such Great Heights Women Ascend to Slopestyle’s Highest Level
When Patricia Druwen dropped into the iconic Joyride slopestyle course on the final day of the Crankworx Whistler festival in July 2023, she had a feeling she was inching toward the inevitable—that one day she would compete in front of the world on this same stage at the Whistler Mountain Bike Park. This would be significant, as the globally renowned contest is a competitive high mark that has only been open to men during its 20-year existence.
But she had no idea that day would come so soon. After all, 2023 was the first time that women had been invited by Crankworx to formally session the course. Actual competition still felt a long way off.
“I knew it would come, but not in 2024,” said Druwen, a 17-year-old phenom from Germany who is quickly earning a reputation as the world’s best female slopestyle rider. “I thought in 2025 or 2026, so it was a big surprise.”
Indeed, at the end of 2023, Crankworx and the Freeride Mountain Bike Association (FMBA) announced the addition of a women’s division for the Slopestyle World Championship (SWC), the elite contest series representing the pinnacle of slopestyle mountain biking. The series consists of competition on four “Diamond Level” courses, one for each of the four Crankworx stops: Rotorua, New Zealand; Cairns, Australia; Innsbruck, Austria; and the crowning event in Whistler, Canada.
This meant that women could also vie for the highly coveted Triple Crown of Slopestyle, a prestigious title offering an individual prize of $25,000 Canadian to any rider who wins three World Championships in a single season. Women had already been on the FMB World Tour since 2022, competing on Bronze and Silver Level courses, but this development opened the door for women to compete at the highest level of slopestyle and receive equal prize payouts, with a total of around $500,000 being awarded across the SWC each season. What’s more, the women would now gain valuable exposure on the global livestream from each competition, presumably leading to more sponsorship dollars for women, while also providing visible proof to young girls that the disciplines of slopestyle and freeride can be viable career avenues.
“We’d been making heroes of the men for years. We needed to do this for women,” said Darren Kinnaird, managing partner of Crankworx and a member of the FMBA’s board of directors.
When the women’s SWC announcement was made, Druwen was just coming off a stellar breakout season in which she won Red Bull Rookie of the Year and racked up six first-place finishes on the FMB World Tour. She also stomped two world firsts at the Swatch Nines MTB slopestyle contest in Switzerland, including a backflip triple barspin and a 540. In an instant, she had a huge new goal for 2024: to become the first female Slopestyle World Champion, and potentially even a Triple Crown winner. The Rookie of the Year award secured her spot in the first SWC competition of the year in Rotorua, so she quickly turned her attention to trick development, working on combos, flip bars, flip tucks, and smaller technical moves like tailwhips so she’d be ready to link them all together in New Zealand.
“I’m focused more on learning new tricks, getting comfortable on my bike, knowing my bike more and more every day. I’m just training every day now,” Druwen said in an interview following an evening session at the Gorge Road jumps in Queenstown, New Zealand, where she was training ahead of the women’s slopestyle debut in Rotorua.
In the end, Druwen sustained an injury in practice and did not compete in Rotorua—a monumental contest resulting in a decisive win on home soil for Kiwi standout Robin Goomes, who entered the competition as the FMB World Tour overall women’s points leader. Goomes’ run—consisting of a triple combo followed by a backflip, a no-footed one-hander off the cannon feature, a one-footer, a sui no-hander, and a backflip one-footer—not only landed her atop the podium, but also proved to the world that women could impress on Diamond Level slopestyle courses. The history-making performances in Rotorua by Goomes and four other female athletes, all of whom completed top-to-bottom runs, left a lasting mark, one whose energy and excitement transcended the news of the men’s last-minute decision to not compete at the same event due to an ongoing dispute with Crankworx over travel budgets and safety concerns.
“The level is set,” proclaimed announcer Cam McCaul following Goomes’ winning run. “All the dirt jumper girls out there, the youngsters, looking up to these brave women, you know what? You’ve got a path now. Keep working on those tricks, and you might be on the Crankworx World Tour in the near future.”
Kinnaird remembers the moment the conversation around women shifted within the Crankworx leadership team. It was late 2014, and the “Always Like A Girl” television ad had recently gone viral. In the ad, the director asks a series of teenagers to demonstrate how to run, throw, or fight like a girl, and their movements all take on a mocking and exaggerated nature. When the same question is asked of younger kids, their physical responses are genuine and pure, with the point being to question at which age saying to do something “like a girl” becomes an insult.
“It was really, really powerful, and we had begun discussions with different stakeholders like Red Bull Canada about ‘how do we in general make mountain biking, make Crankworx, more inclusive with a focus on women?’ It was really watching that video. We didn’t ever want that to happen in mountain biking, where people say, ‘Oh, your mountain bike like a girl,’” Kinnaird said.
The goal was to offer equal prize money, broadcast time, podium time, and a pathway for women to compete in every discipline at Crankworx. They knew that slopestyle would likely be the most difficult to integrate, due to the necessary increase in sponsorship dollars to support it. There had been an earlier women-led effort called WomenzWorx from 2007 to 2009, with the Gala slopestyle contest at the Whistler Mountain Bike Park serving as the main event. But the real turning point didn’t come until 2015, when Crankworx expanded from a single festival in Whistler to an international tour. That’s also when Crankworx debuted equal prize money and started presenting podium awards with men and women side-by-side in a show of equal representation.
That same year, Canadian Trish Bromley entered the men’s category of the Speed & Style competition in lieu of a women’s category, which resulted in that division being created the following year—a move that Kinnaird viewed as a gateway to a women’s slopestyle category. But the big contest, the highest-profile, most-spectated event of each festival, was still only for men.
“IT WAS JUST ME, STOPPED ON THE COURSE, AND THE TEARS WERE JUST COMING INTO MY EYES. RIDING JOYRIDE, THIS IS THE PINNACLE OF SLOPESTYLE FOR ME. I COULDN’T BELIEVE IT.”
—Kathi Kuypers
During these years, Kinnaird and his team of mostly women were working behind the scenes to create a women’s slopestyle category, an endeavor that was set back by the COVID-induced cancellation of Crankworx Whistler in 2020 and 2021. Then in 2023, a handful of pro women were invited to ride the slopestyle courses in Innsbruck and Whistler, hinting at what was to come. The experience in Whistler was so meaningful to German freerider Kathi Kuypers that her emotions overflowed mid-run.
“It was so crazy,” she said. “I watched the boys compete at Red Bull Joyride forever. I would always watch the livestream at like four in the morning (in Germany). I had the option to drop in, and I posted this reel. It was just me, stopped on the course, and the tears were just coming into my eyes. Riding Joyride, this is the pinnacle of slopestyle for me. I couldn’t believe it.”
Ultimately, opening slopestyle to women this year required a significant financial commitment from Red Bull and the competition’s presenting sponsors, Maxxis, SRAM and RockShox, in order to provide equal prize money for each event. Progression also played a role: As more opportunities have surfaced for women to compete at the sport’s top levels over the last few years, their skills have rapidly developed. A decade ago, straight-lining a huge jump was the high bar for women in freeride. These days, the tricks are far more technical, while combinations, rotations and aerials are commonplace. Events like Red Bull Formation, held at the Rampage site in Utah between 2019 and 2022, women’s inclusion in the FMB World Tour and at Sam Reynolds’ massive Darkfest jump jam in South Africa, have all provided staging grounds for female progression.
Every year, women are stomping bigger landings, sending bigger jumps, launching bigger drops, and progressing their backflips, frontflips, 360s, 540s, truck driver/barspin combos and other tricks, while injecting much-needed energy and dynamism into historically male-only competitions. At this year’s grueling Red Bull Hardline downhill race in Tasmania, Canadian Gracey Hemstreet completed the entire course, becoming the first woman to do so in the event’s 10-year history.
After witnessing the women’s high level of riding at the Rheeder Slopestyle contest during the Crankworx Summer Series event at SilverStar in the summer of 2023, Kinnaird knew it was time for Crankworx to step up. Druwen won that event with a smooth and stylish run, tricking almost every feature, starting with a switch double-barspin, followed by a sui, a 360, and a backflip—a run that would have seemed unfathomable just one year earlier.
“After seeing women with four days of proper practice on what I would consider a Crankworx-level (Diamond) course, it’s like, ‘Wow, if we don’t do this, it’s wrong,’” said Kinnaird, noting that the women’s SWC commitment is a long-term one. “I go back to the Like A Girl commercial and what we set out to do back in 2015 to provide equal opportunities for women at Crankworx. We can do that now. To me, it was a no-brainer.”
Kinnaird likens the timing to watching an airplane come in for a landing: any earlier and the plane would have come up short; any longer and it would have missed the runway.
“Right now, it feels like we’re right on time,” he said. For those who have pushed for equality in the sport for decades, the SWC and other recent advancements for women feel rewarding, if not slightly bittersweet."
It’s amazing that finally women are getting recognized, that people are realizing they can’t not pay attention,” said Claire Buchar, a former elite World Cup downhill racer and pioneering advocate for women’s equality in mountain biking. “It’s huge, but it’s also like, ‘it’s about time.’ Now we have the platform to grow and build. The men have had 20 years to get as good as they are now. What we’re seeing from women is just the beginning. But it’s also painfully nagging to imagine where we could be.”
Like all new things, the implementation of the women’s SWC won’t be perfect in its first year. For one, there are only six women’s spots up for grabs at the invitation-only Diamond Level competitions, compared to 14 in the men’s field, and the invitations are based on FMB World Tour points rankings. The first invitations for each contest go to the top-six ranked women six weeks before each Diamond Level event, with at least 500 FMB World Tour points required to qualify. Because the women’s SWC was announced after the final FMB World Tour event in 2023, prospective competitors had little time to scramble for FMB World Tour points to potentially qualify.
Furthermore, with FMB World Tour events spread out across the globe, the lack of adequate travel budgets is a continual barrier to qualification. Many professional women riders still have to work other jobs to support their riding careers, making it difficult to garner enough points to qualify.
As the SWC gains momentum, some women simply won’t have the chance to compete in the early years. Kuypers, ranked 15th on the FMB World Tour, is facing that hard reality, having recently lost her travel budget from sponsor Trek Bicycles as part of an industry-wide cutback. At age 33, she’s not sure if her time will come, but she’s continuing to train on the airbag and compete in as many Europe-based FMB events as she can, all in the hope of achieving a life goal of gaining entry into a Diamond Level slopestyle competition.
“I’ll try to make as many points as possible, but my main goal is pushing my riding for myself, then to gain points,” said Kuypers. “I’m happy and proud of myself to still be learning crazy tricks at the age of 33. But I don’t know if I can watch the girls. It breaks my heart.”
Kuypers also worries that there won’t be enough opportunities for women to get FMB World Tour points to ensure a path of progression from the bottom. It’s often up to individual FMB World Tour event organizers to secure the financial support necessary to include a women’s category, and even when they do that, they still have to commit to a payout for it to be on the same FMB World Tour level as the men’s contest. Of the 28 FMB World Tour events on the calendar, the men have three Gold Level contests, while the women only have one. And women need at least two Gold Level events in order to participate in the inaugural FMB Gold Cup, which will provide another avenue for athletes to prequalify for the SWC in 2025.
Currently, the Rheeder Slopestyle at SilverStar is the only Gold Level women’s event on the 2024 calendar. This classification was not negotiable this year for designer Brett Rheeder, a four-time FMB World Champion. After negative optics from the 2023 event, in which the men’s contest was Gold Level and the women’s was Silver Level— meaning that the men’s winner Erik Fedko received $10,000 compared to the $2,000 that Druwen got for her victory—Rheeder was adamant about leveling the playing field. He isn’t personally responsible for the sponsorships or financial side of the event, and he credits the management at SilverStar Resort for coming up with the cash to make it a Gold Level competition.
“All that I have done is express how it needs to happen, and when the question is asked to me I just don’t budge,” said Rheeder, who has also vocally supported the inclusion of a women’s category in Rampage, the world’s biggest freeride contest. “It’s so important if women want to do this, they need to be able to do it. That’s how the sport will get bigger. That’s how more younger women are going to be inspired to be the next version of the athletes we’re seeing currently.”
The commitment and support of Crankworx is leading the way, Rheeder said. “[Druwen] is on another level in the women’s category,” he added. “It’s so exciting to see who’s going to come up and give Patricia a run for her money. And the up and comers won’t be coming from one part of the world. They’ll be from five parts of the world. Soon, women’s slopestyle is going to be more exciting than men’s.
For many riders on the FMB bubble, the addition of the SWC will be a motivator in the future, even if they can’t get the points this year. Jordy Scott, a Utah-based freerider who was ranked 10th on the FMB World Tour in late March and is relatively new to slopestyle, is excited for the opportunity to progress in another discipline and diversify her repertoire with a different skill set.
Scott competes for the all-around Queen of Crankworx crown, an award worth $20,000 given to the female athlete with the most points across the entire Crankworx World Tour. To win this title, riders must compete in multiple disciplines, such as pumptrack, dual slalom and downhill. For Scott, the addition of a women’s slopestyle category could mean another way to add points toward that crown, rather than having to race downhill to fill the gap.
“It’s super cool to be able to compete in something that I enjoy progressing in, and also get points instead of forcing myself to do something that isn’t the most enjoyable for me,” Scott said.
Like many competitors, Scott is also looking toward the future in the hope that the women’s SWC elevates female slopestyle riders into heroes who will serve as role models in the same way that Goomes, Casey Brown, Harriet Burbidge-Smith, and others are inspiring today’s teens to make a career of mountain biking.
“I think it’ll be really good for the progression of the sport,” Scott said. “Slopestyle is almost at that point where it’s a dead-end thing [for women]. I see all these little young boy groms and they have big things to look forward to—kids at seven years old whose big goal is to ride Joyride. Girls don’t see that possibility.”
All eyes will be on the women this year as they continue to push boundaries, show what’s possible on a bike, and wow the world with their dedication, grit, and skill. If all goes well, when Druwen drops into the Joyride course this summer, it won’t be for practice. She’ll be competing in front of tens of thousands of live spectators, people streaming the contest around the world, and her peers. She anticipates clean runs will garner the most points this inaugural year, as women learn how to parley their arsenals of rotations, aerials, and tricks onto the bigger Diamond Level courses.
And even though she’ll likely have experience on Diamond Level courses under her belt by the time she makes her historic Joyride run this July, Druwen knows nothing will quite compare to that moment—sitting atop the first stepdown, waiting to drop in, with the biggest crowd in mountain biking roaring in the background.
“I’m so scared for it,” she said. “It’s huge. Not only the public livestream, but there will be so many other competitors watching us ride. I’m just going to try to focus and drown out the noise.”
