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Skateboarding Vert Prelims:
The mighty vert prelims were a mental martial arts tournament. Each guy had to ask himself the same question, "How hard do I need to go off, and when I do go off, will the judges think I am kicking down as hard as I should be? And most of all, am I gonna stick every trick?"
As Jason Ellis so bluntly put it, "Some guys are taking it easy and some are laying their best sh*t on the line cuz they suck!" You could really tell when one skater was giving it everything they had and when another was just doing monkey motions to get into the top ten. Pierre-Luc Gagnon wacked his knee performing his normal air cracking run, then sat with a hot ice pack watching the crew try to knock him out of his top spot.
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| Bob Burnquist indy grabs above the coping in his 1st prelim run. |
In comparison to Pierre-Luc's cool demeanor,
Chris Gentry was a bit tense due to some unforseen falls. He was a bit off today and you could see the effort he was giving to hit that top ten. His runs were similar to
Sandro Dias' except Chris actually qualified. Poor Sandro was off his game today and missed a few stock tricks, and his shot at qualifying. Both of those guys were busting huge but couldn't keep their boards under them on a couple of tricks. But you know, there is something cool about these guys seriously powerful skating. Afterall, this aint' ice dancing.
Burnquist dropped in for run number one and unloaded his typical bag of confusion. Switch this and that backed up with enormous boned out stock airs that made yoga instructors feel stiff. Oops, then there was the fall. Those dang falls insure a low score. Bob needed his second run to be a point scoring weapon. It was a pretty little dance made up of stuff gnarly enough to win the contest, but easy enough for Bob that the judges wouldn't have any part of it. They stuck him in 10th. Ain't skating grand? The sport is gonna call you out when you're holding back.
Each guy just drops in and lays down the best they got at that moment. "I guess it is up to us." That's what Pierre Luc said when asked what is expected of a skater in the prelims. Good answer I'd have to say. Especially when you saw Andy Mac try to do a heel flip and turn the mistake into a frontside 360 shove it/lein grab. Everyone saw it, and everyone loved it because he actually stuck it. Skateboarding makes it own rules on each day. And that, my friends, is the number one reason skateboarding is cooler than ice dancing.
Moto X Freestyle Prelims:
On the Moto X side of things it was all about
Mike Metzger and the new kids on the dirt. The Metz pulled out the backflip and took the first qualifying spot into the finals easily. Up and coming riders Drake McElroy, Dayne Kinnaird and
Nate Adams all fought their way into the finals as well. Dayne was showing off the combinations that got him from Australia to the X Games. McElroy came out with great style, long extension and his signature trick, The Corpse, to put himself into third.
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| Metzger busts out one of his many backflips of the day. |
Kenny Bartram was on a tear as well, solidly extended all day and throwing out the biggest tricks in the sport today. Despite a Rock Solid, Stripper, Corpse and a Cliffhanger to no-handed landing, Bartram was well behind Metzger in second. Kenny was searching out different lines in his final run though and was flirting with a backflip off a step-up style dirt ramp cut specifically for him. He didn't hit it but his buddy
Travis Pastrana was all over him about going for it in the finals tomorrow.
Metzger led the charge and hit the flip as the last trick in his run, following it up with a big whip on the jump directly after the flip. Metz has promised more for tomorrow, saying that he is going for a flip over the 75-foot gap. Watching from the sidelines tomorrow for the finals will be OG riders
Brian Deegan and
Mike Jones. Both failed to break into the top 8 after getting a bit too sketchy in their final runs. Jonesy lost a hand on a superman and Deegan failed to get extended on a cliffhanger, but neither crashed.
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Related Photos:
Day One Prelims Gallery
