Three finals down and four to go in Barcelona. The stands were packed on
Saturday for the Inline vert finals and the skateboarding park finals. Both
events saw Spanish athletes elevating themselves in front of the hometown
crowd and one even getting a ticket to Philly for next month's X Games.
The Spanish cheering section really had something to scream about when Borja
Fernandez, Jose Felix Hormaetxe and Nel Martin stepped onto the vert ramp
for the inline finals. Taig Kris debuted his double backflip in warm-up and
Anthony Avella brought out some extremely progressive lip tricks, just to
show that France would not go down easily in the comparison. When the wind
kicked up to 35 miles per hour at the start of the comp and the skaters
voted to keep riding, it was obvious that it was going to be a serious
event.
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| Long 50-50s like this got Stefan second. |
Jose Felix threw down two runs worth of enormous airs, pulling a perfect
Yasutoko-like flat spin 720 in the first run to finish 5th. Nel Martin
skated two clean runs to finish 4th, a placement which qualifies him for the
X Games. Sven Boekhurst, who qualified in 1st place yesterday, slipped to
3rd today with a pair of solid but conservative runs. Taig Kris, who missed
the double backflip in his first run, skated a cautious second run, lacing
the gato spin and nailing the double back at the very end for a silver
medal. Borja Fernandez of Bilbao Spain stole the gold hands down with a
balls-out run that tore up the ramp, airs that were double grabbed and solid
lip tricks. It was a proud day for the skaters of Spain and for an audience
that will surely reserve seats ahead of time to cheer the Spanish street
skaters in tomorrow's event.
On the other side of the grandstands an internationally diverse group of
skaters took over the park course. The event had the feel of a Moto X
competition, with many of the riders going to it with old school metal or
hard rock as their cruising music. There was plenty of Sabbath, AC/DC and
even some Motley Crue and Iron Maiden in the mix. Leading the rock out
session was gold medalist Chris Astrom clad in all black, throwing out the
horns before he dropped in on the quarterpipe.
Astrom tore apart the course, using as much of it as possible throughout his
two runs. He was the only skater to combine flip tricks and rail tricks when
he hit a kickflip to lipslide on one of the many rails. Coming back around,
he 360 kickflipped over the center hip. The competition seemed to be all
locked up after Chris' first run.
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| Chris owned the rail on Saturday. |
Roman Hackl was the closest to Chris going into the final round, but
couldn't stay on his board for his entire second run. He still managed a
huge kickflip over the tabletop and a stylish boardslide down one of the
rails. That was only good enough to give him third. Stefan Lehnert captured
second with some great flow throughout the course and a solid b/s lipslide
down the well-used rail.
The entire event was more of a friendly session at a local park instead of a
competition. Skaters were going big and pulling out old school tricks on the
vert portions of the course. Almost everyone would throw out a few extra
tricks after their time was called, keeping the crowd pumped the entire
time.
Tomorrow is the big day, with finals on the park for Inline and BMX and on
the vert ramp for Skate and BMX. All four events feature big name athletes
and a last chance to qualify for the X Games in Philly.
Related Photos:
Barcelona day two - Skate Park
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