Casey Brown’s Dark Horse Invitational Starts Today
Brown's home mountain, Revelstoke Mountain Resort, hosts the ladies' progression session
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The massive new course build for the Pro Line for this week’s Dark Horse Invitational is in its finishing stages, as athletes from North America, Europe and New Zealand gather at Revelstoke Mountain Resort. The invitational is the brainchild of women’s freeride pioneer Casey Brown.
The concept behind Dark Horse focuses on progression and skills development, and the schedule consists of air bag/mulch sessions at Revelstoke’s bike park, laps on Boulder Mountain downhill tracks and culminates in Friday afternoon’s Dark Horse Air Sesh on the new Pro Line.
In order to bring her Dark Horse line to life, Brown teamed up with friend and renowned trailbuilder Corbin Selfe, who’s been digging, building and sculpting, with the help of the Revelstoke Mountain Resort trail crew, for the past several weeks. The course consists of a large, 13-foot ramp, four jumps and a progression zone with a mulch jump and air bag. That was dialed back from Brown’s original plan to build six jumps, due dry weather this summer and extreme fire danger. Fortunately, the course has access to water from the resort’s winter snowmaking operation to keep the dirt tamped down.
“Casey pitched the idea to me last spring and we flagged out a spot where we thought we could utilize a lot of the natural features in the terrain,” said Selfe. “The biggest motivation for me working on this project is to have an end product that will really round out the Revy riding scene. Revelstoke has a lot of amazing trails, but nothing of this size and magnitude yet.”
The course is located approximately 400 meters from the base of the resort and will be easy for riders and spectators to access. It will remain intact and incorporated into the bike park after this week’s event.
The list of confirmed athletes for Dark Horse represent some of the biggest names in women’s freeride, as well as up-and-comers:
- Georgia Astle
- Micayla Gatto
- Bailey Goldstone
- Hannah Bergemann
- Jordy Scott
- Natasha Miller
- Harriet Burbidge-Smith
- Camila Nogueira
- Miranda Miller
- Sam Soriano
- CJ Selig
- Lucy Van Eestern
- Lily Boucher
The Dark Horse Invitational is supported by the Province of British Columbia’s Resort Municipality Initiatives Funding Program, as well as Trek, FiveTen, Swatch, Red Bull and a host of local sponsors.