|
(Sacramento, CA - September 3, 2005) The pro park event
was, in a word, sick. Right from the start, it was anybody’s game.
Dayne Brummet
was pulling super tech tricks on the flat rail and sticking
blunt sal flips to fakie on the quarterpipe.
Avi Luzia
of Israel threw
tech street tricks on the vert quarterpipe. And
Ryan Johnson
was bombing
the course with his usual power, pulling frontside axle stalls on the
hitching post.
|
|
Wolnei dos Santos with a 5-0 across the flat rail.
|
Wolnei dos Santos
launched off a bank, out of the course, but didn’t
make the final cut. Neither did
Donovan Dresti
, who tried but couldn’t
quite pull a bank-to-bank big flip.
Benji Galloway
was one of the only
skaters who hit the big launch, sticking a backside 180 over the box,
but even his stunts couldn’t hold a candle to the top five.
MSS newcomer
Avi Luzia
took fifth place with a backside hard flip on the
quarterpipe.
Dayne Brummet
just missed the podium with a switch bigspin
to boardslide. But the top three were solid, and, as head judge Dave
Metty said, “It was practically a toss-up. They all laid it down
from start to finish.”
Ronnie Creager
hit every flip in the book over the bank launch. He even
threw a kickflip off the deck of the six-foot quarter to flat, but in
the end, it was his switch flip to boardslide on the flat rail that earned
him the bronze.
Greg Lutzka
was skating so hard, you would have thought there were three
of him. He did so many great tricks, as Metty said, “it was like
watching his video part.” He took the silver with a 360 flip lipslide
to fakie on the flat rail.
|
|
Street top-three (left to right: Greg Lutzka, Austen Seaholm, Ronnie
Creager)
|
But nobody could deny
Austen Seaholm’s
skill as he put together
a package of tricks that nobody else could touch. He nailed a sal flip
over the launch and about a million flip variations over the banked box,
including a flawless frontside 360 kickflip. But the showstopper was
something that Austen created on the spot: a bluntside to switch crooked
grind transfer across a foot-wide ledge.
From there, it was on to the vert ramp where the dust had barely cleared
from Tony Hawk’s demo the night before. In addition to the regular
cast of scoundrels that usually show up at the top of the vert ramp,
there were a couple of new faces:
Otavio Neto
from Sao Paulo, Brazil
and 18 year-old
Rob Lorifice
from Encinitas, California. These new guys
were eager to prove themselves against the seasoned pros, and the crowd
was passionately supportive.
Despite a disappointing set of runs,
Buster Halterman
had an amazing
jam session, throwing a frontside rodeo 540 and a beautiful mctwist as
well as a backside nosegrind to finish in 7th.
Jean Postec
also had an
outstanding jam session. It was so good, in fact, that if the timed runs
hadn’t counted for 50% of the final score, he probably would have
won the comp with his head-high 720 and back-to-back fliptricks.
Head judge Dave Metty described Neto’s runs as
Burnquiest-esque
,
the way he managed to stay on impossible tricks like his nollies which
he does five feet out, without grabbing.
Mathias Ringstrom
skated ambitiously. One of his runs was packed with
18 tricks, including every blunt in the book. During the jam sessions,
he threw down back-to-back liptricks.
Neal Hendrix
is one of those guys who feeds off the jam session format,
building momentum as he goes. Every time he dropped in, he threw big
tricks, culminating with a cab heelflip indy over the ten-foot channel.
And the gold medal went to
Anthony Furlong
who put two together two
great runs and still managed to dominate the jam session. The judges
loved his cab 540 tail grabs and alley oop frontside 5-0s, which spanned
most of the ramp, while his enormous madonnas were a crowd favorite.
|
|
Vert winners (left to right: Mathias Ringstrom, Anthony Furlong,
Neal Hendrix)
|
Nobody was surprised by Furlong’s victory except Anthony himself. “I
didn’t even think the judges were watching me,” he said.
Get
Results Here:
» Street
Photo Gallery
» Vert Photo
Gallery
|
