Friday, September 28

Concrete Challenge

By Keith Eric Davidson

While the rest of the nation mourned the tragic events that took place on September 11th, skaters in Colorado took matters into their own hands and participated in the 2nd Annual "Concrete Challenge". Most other sporting and celebrity events were canceled for the following weekend, but skaters came and rallied together, unified for one purpose, to get their skate on in some of the best skateparks in the world.

Due to many canceled flights, a lot of last year's participants, such as victors Alan Petersen and Omar Hassan were not present at this year's events. This didn't stop those who really had a desire to get down and dirty, such as Ben Krahn, who after finding out his plane flight was canceled, without hesitation grabbed his wife and two Chihuahuas and drove straight out from Philadelphia.

Denver Colorado's brand new 50,000 square foot skatepark was the first stop for the Challenge, and the 11 foot dogbowl would be where the action would take place on Friday. Unfortunately the size of the bowl did tend to intimidate some of the more street oriented competitors, who eventually decided to bail out last minute. With so much terrain available at a park the size of Denver, it would be great to see the entire park utilized, thus enabling a true skatepark warrior to emerge.

The Denver bowl...stop drooling.

Along with the size of the pool, the weather seemed to offer a challenge as well to the twenty or so contestants battling it out for the green. The on and off rain showers didn't stop the sick skating of Colorado locals Dave Tuck and Wrex Cook, who obviously had the home field advantage. Both used every inch of the pools hips and lips with intimate knowledge that only a loc would have.

Due to the fact that the park was lit until eleven p.m., the contest took on a mostly laid back, Friday night party atmosphere with many of the competitors enjoying adult drinks in between handplants and tailslides. I overheard one competitor state "It's the weekend so I got to cram all the fun stuff together such as drinking and skating." Toward the end of the night I looked over at the single 70 year old security guard who had a beer cup in one hand and a twenty something year old girl in the other. While most people wouldn't advocate mixing alcohol and concrete vert bowl skating, it didn't seem to hamper any of the contestants who gave the crowd a ripping show.

Mark Lisak, nosepick with a little help from his friends.

South Carolina's Benji Galloway flowed back to back tech including switch frontside airs followed up by frontside gay twists into first place. Other highlights include Ben Krahn's unplanned freeform attack and Brewce Martin's hyperventilating speed lines.

Saturday was a traveling day to Aspen, where Sunday's contest would take place. The 10 foot bowl in Aspen is a little more forgiving than the Denver bowl as it allows the skaters to use the hips back to back, or the square deep end could be skated as a traditional vert ramp. Looking good in the prelims was Chris Sessions, who did every air over every hip and five-o's over the same hips as well. Burnside local Josh Falk mysteriously showed up at the contest after a wedding in nearby Vail, and unleashed kickflips to fakie out of the deep end and unusual transfers over the waterfalls that separate the bowls. First place went to Dave "Science Fair" Maxwell who was unstoppable on this day, as he did every air and footplant over all of the hips in a single run that left the rest of the contestants in awe. After the contest was over Breckenride local Jeremiah Worm pulled a backflip in the deepend and Willy Wonka dropped in on table held up vertically in the deepend. All in all even without the Big Guns of California, the "Concrete Challenge" was a success. See you next year!

Check the gallery.

Results Denver Sept. 14th 2001

1) Benji Galloway $2,000
2) Todd Johnson $1,200
3) Dave "Science Fair" Maxwell $800
4) Dave Tuck $600
5) Ben Krahn $400
6) Wrex Cook
7) Brewce Martin
8) Chad Simone
9) General Carl Romulus
10) Jeremiah Worm

Results Aspen Sept. 16th 2001

1) Dave "Science Fair" Maxwell $2,000
2) Ben Krahn $1,200
3) Wrex Cook $800
4) Brewce Martin $600
5) Benji Galloway $400
6) Greg Leblanc
7) Todd Johnson
8) Chris Sessions
9) Josh Falk
10) Mark Lisack