A while ago I posted something on longboarding and in particular downhill longboarding and I was intrigued about it. I thought it had died around the time things started changing and the industry contracted. Skateboarding used to have a lot more facets than we see today in the mainstream skateboarding media. I noticed that their equipment had evolved and was better and more tailored for going down hill with speed.
Well imagine what I thought when I saw publicity for the 2010 World Championships of Freestyle Skateboarding. Freestylers were another group that suffered from a downturn in skateboarding popularity. On their blog I note that it’s the 10 year anniversary of the re-birth of competitive Freestyle skateboarding, apparently ten year ago, after it bottomed out and went underground, keen freestylers got together and started freestyle competition up again. It’s truly international with the last competition having been held in Japan and in the current competition, among the 80+ entrants 11 different countries represented.
I was always led to believe that freestyle changed into streetstyle with Rodney Mullen. I looked at the development of the whole S.K.A.T.E. thing as what kids who would have freestyled do today. I didn’t realize it was alive and well in all it’s original glory. Another layer of skateboarding resurfacing. I like all the textures and differences that are starting to appear in today’s skateboarding.
Here’s some modern European Freestyle it seems to have taken hold there.
Joe Flemke
The first Street League competition is over, and it’s probably an interesting enough trend in the development of skateboarding competitions for me to mark it with some sort of post. It’ll either fade away or move from strength to strength depending on how it goes in the mainstream media. There were some interesting results from the Arizona leg of Street League event compared to the Maloof Cup. I guess Chris Cole, P Rod and Ryan Sheckler will be wondering if they made the right choice in jumping off the Maloof/Dew gravy train. Nyjah and Nugget took out first and second respectively, correcting some possible injustices that some commentators thought about the Maloof scorings. Sheckler had the similar issues with scoring in other competitions when he was younger. Probably a little difficult to “adjust” the scores when the scoring is live.
The Best Trick Winners Creative Section – Peter Ramondetta – Ollie Impossible 50/50, 6.2 points – $5000 Line Section – Shane O’Neill – Nollie Backside Heel over the gap then Switch 360 Flip down the stairs, 6.3 points – $5000 Tech Section – Shane O’Neill – Nollie Kickflip Noseslide 270 shuvit – 6.9 points – $5000 Big Section – Was a draw between Chris Cole and Nyjah Huston with 7.5 points each. Chris Cole did a gap out to frontside 180 switch backside feeble on the kinked rail with Nyjah Huston doing a gap out to big spin flip boardslide on the same rail. The next best trick settles the draw. Chris Cole’s three sixty flip 50-50 on the big section hubba beat Nyjah Houston’s second best trick. – $5000 Best Overall Trick – Chris Cole gap out to frontside 180 switch backside feeble on the kinked rail. – 7.5 points – $5000
Here is the ESPN take on the competition and the video I embedded from their site.
In the US it will feature on ESPN2 on September 15th at 8pm EST/5pm PST so maybe there won’t be too much more footage forthcoming before the screening.
Here are some Am Cam clips from the event. Not filmed very well but cool because it’s what you’d see if you actually went to it, but not so cool if you actually wanted to know what went on. Just looking through some of the clips it doesn’t look like quite the spectator event that I thought it would be and I guess it’s probably more designed for TV, and in reality that’s where the money is anyway.
Here’s DC’s take of “The DC Pro”. There is going to be some exclusive coverage of the contest on the site a little later and I’ll link it up once it appears. Until that goes up here is a link to the Street League Qualifier that was held earlier.
Here’s a video of some of the pre competition publicity. A video I liked because it featured second placeholder Shane O’Neill who I thought got a little cheated at Maloof – New York, just shows sometimes qualifying in a competition sometimes isn’t as good as being ripped off. Nugget suddenly became a lot of peoples new favorite skater.
… and finally an article from ESPN giving some of the background about Street League for those who thought it was a basketball (streetball) league.
The schedule of the three days is:
Saturday 23rd October – practice session
Sunday 24th October – qualifying and semifinals
Monday 25th October – semifinals and finals
The sections are:
Open Mens
Open Womens
16 and under
13 and under
To register to enter the competition contact Cheapskates Khyber PassPhone 09 379 5048 or qualify at your Regional Qualifying Competition.
I guess this had to come. Remember seeing Geoff, Arthur and Dubs playing this in the car. Skate Trivia. Our history could be as big as S-K-A-T-E, another trivial game.
There is a vertical banner on the side of my blog that has google ads on it. I think I get paid for each click or something but normally they have nothing to do with skateboarding and I guess no one ever clicks on them anyway, because I’ve never seen any money from it. Well a while back there was a Mountain Dew Code Red banner and it looked interesting. I didn’t click it because that’s a violation of the terms of use, but there was a URL http://www.mountaindewcodered.co.nz so I typed it in.
It’s a site decked out like a flat that features three action sports athletes (“the Residents”), a prize room (“Gear Room”) and a TV with action sports videos (“Watch the Stunts”) on it. The action sports athletes are: wakeboarder Brad Smeeke, BMXer Haimona Ngata and skateboarding’s Brett Band. I always have two feelings when I see these sites, first I’m happy that a skateboarder has the opportunity to be on this sort of thing and that someone from outside is interested in skateboarding, but then I get disappointed because it’s too mainstream and thus a little cheesy.
The site is pretty much done now and all the clips are up.
Here in New Zealand Code Red has a berry flavour, but in the US it’s cherry. In the States things have moved on as far as the flavours go, in addition to the CodeRed (Cherry), there is LiveWire (Orange) and Voltage (Raspberry, Citrus and Ginseng), as well as White Out (White-Colored Citrus) which is due out later this year.
Things have also moved on with the Green Label Sports too. In addition to the Dew Tour with footage here, Paul Rodriguez has a mini site. The tour must cost a bit to put on, and I doubt if it they would break even let alone make a profit. It’s cool that they have chosen to put money into our sport.
Another interesting feature on the US site is the “Green Label Art” Shop Series. Thirty-five skate shops across seven different regions in the US each created their own can design. Pretty cheesy, but it’d be cool to have your own can. Schidt colab.
A warm sunny day in Dunedin. The sun was out and the weather was stunning!
Results of Skate to Relate 3
Open 1st Nick Bright 2nd Troy Tapara 3rd Joel Stirling
16 and Under 1st PJ Wybrow 2nd Joel Stirling 3rd Jack Byrne
13 and Under 1st Ben Hotton 2nd Ashley Low 3rd Carlos Boyes
Ben Hotton
Joel Stirling
PJ Wybrow
There can only be one winner... well in this case three.
Some strong skating by all the contestants, and a fun day for the spectators.
A thank you to all the sponsors:
DCC, YAC, Cheapskates, Quest, Vic, Vans, abc, Traffick, Habitat, Huffer, Element, enjoi, Chop, RPM, Manual, Fresh, Destructo, LRG and Globe
…and a big thank you for Seth for organizing it and MC Beau for being the compère.
MC Beau
For your viewing pleasure, here are the top three contestants in the three age brackets. It runs just short of 28 minutes.
In the last minute of the final jam it started to rain a little, then the heavens opened up, and it poured. Chris Cole did a switch 360 flip down the 9 stair and a sugarcane on the tech rail to take out top honors and $100,000. Paul Rodriguez did a switch flip down the 9 stair and a switch backside lip down the big rail to take out second and $40,000.
Courtesy ESPN. Features the full 2 days, unfortunately you’ll have to sit through the ad. What would you do with the $100,000? I guess the only answer that would count would be Chris Coles.
Courtesy of Alli(Alliance of Action Sports).
The Pro section,
and the Am section.
From Skateboarder Magazine some photos here and here and the obligatory video.
Results:
Professional Final
Place
Skater
Zone1
Zone2
Zone3
Average
Prize Money
1
Chris Cole
81.83
86.23
98.67
88.91
$100,000
2
Paul Rodriguez
89.33
81.17
91.50
87.33
$40,000
3
Torey Pudwill
84.00
81.33
81.00
82.11
$25,000
4
Bastien Salabanzi
78.33
80.67
83.00
80.66
$15,000
5
Sean Malto
83.17
72.50
85.83
80.50
$6,000
6
Sierra Fellers
75.17
69.00
89.00
77.72
$5,000
7
Ryan Decenzo
69.33
66.67
89.83
75.27
$4,000
8
Peter Ramondetta
67.83
63.17
80.33
70.44
$3,000
9
Greg Lutzka
68.50
67.83
73.67
70.00
$2,500
10
David Gonzalez
68.67
55.17
82.50
68.78
$2,000
11
Keegan Sauder
60.17
55.50
69.00
61.55
$1,500
12
Caswell Berry
48.00
49.50
36.67
44.72
$1,200
Ams Final
Place
Skater
Zone1
Zone2
Zone3
Average
Prize Money
1
Felipe Gustavo
82.67
81.50
81.33
81.83
$1,000
2
Tom Asta
74.50
68.50
88.01
77.00
$400
3
Gilbert Crockett
73.33
72.00
83.33
76.22
$300
4
Jeff Marshall
76.00
62.67
86.67
75.11
5
Ishod Wair
68.33
66.83
88.83
74.66
6
Cody Davis
70.00
70.33
83.17
74.5
The “Yard Sale” from Thrasher, lots of little treasures…
From The Skateboard Mag, Maloof Money Cup Part One and Maloof Money Cup Part Two of their lifeys. Quite like the poses everyone is doing. Those newer SLRs are cool, the way you can video as well as doing a still, I guess a lot of them don’t know that yet.
The controversy of the Qualifiers? Why did Shane O’Neill not make the cut after nollie back heelflipping the nine stair or switch flip backlipping the nine stair rail?
Sometimes there is controversy at our local competitions. Someone will have done an amazing trick, but does not win the competition. In our competitions we often have two minute long runs, best run counts. Notice it’s runs. That means more than one trick. As a judge you’re looking at consistency, variation, difficulty, gnarlyness and style. One trick hits maybe three of these, but not the other two, it doesn’t give judges much to work with, and often the points don’t add up to more than a flowing consistent run of moderate difficulty would.
For the Maloof Cup it’s three sets of two judges judging three zones. Each zone seems to be broken down into sections with different obstacles that contribute to the zone score. You have to hit all the obstacles to maximize your score. I guess they do it that way because judges can’t see all the course. Apparently all six judges judged the two obstacles in the final zone. A measure put in place maybe to make things fairer, but perhaps not in this case. Reading the rules and understanding the judging is often the way to do well in competitions. Having said that, the system for scoring was pretty high tec, using iPads to quickly take the scores from judges and calculate the results. There were some issues with the wireless computer networks and overheating iPads.
Which possibly explains this:
Looks like zone 3 hasn’t been calculated properly and is just an average of Zones 1 and 2, if you look at Zone 3 and the Average they are the same.
There were three zones that were averaged to produce a final score. P. Rod who was first qualifier performer, skated well on all of the zones, Shane O’Neill hammered the third zone with the nine stair, but didn’t perform well on the previous zones. He had a score on the nines stair zone that was pretty close to P.Rod’s, but his other scores let him down. Pity, was looking forward to seeing Shane in the finals.
Here’s something I found about the judging. Included was a diagram that showed the judging of the three zones and the breakdown of the obstacles. Click this to make the diagram full size, so you can read it.
Notice the six judges split into three panels judging three obstacles for Zones 1 and 2. Have to hit all three obstacles to make it count in Zones 1 and 2. So in Zone 1 that means tricks over the grating.
The first twelve qualify for the final.
Place
Skater
Zone1
Zone2
Zone3
Average
1
Paul Rodriguez
81.50
74.67
93.83
83.33
2
Torey Pudwill
77.83
76.83
76.67
77.11
3
Chris Cole
67.17
73.83
87.17
76.05
4
Bastien Salabanzi
66.33
71.50
84.33
74.05
5
Peter Ramondetta
70.00
53.15
88.33
70.50
6
Sean Malto
57.00
67.83
86.17
70.33
7
Ryan Decenzo
60.83
57.83
90.33
69.66
8
Keegan Sauder
67.39
72.17
69.78
69.78
9
Greg Lutzka
70.33
67.89
69.11
69.11
10
David Gonzalez
49.00
71.00
82.50
67.50
11
Caswell Berry
68.50
50.50
77.17
65.39
12
Sierra Fellers
60.67
53.33
79.17
64.39
15
Shane O’Neill
37.83
54.17
93.17
61.72
Here’s some more of Shane O’Neill courtesy of The Skate Spot.
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