I’ve been skating for over 20 years. I started Freestyle Skating in May 2006. I try to keep a balance of both freestyle slalom (on the cones) and just plain freestyle (off the cones), but I end up doing slalom more.
I’m currently involved with a small group of people trying to increase the popularity of freestyle and skating in general in North America.
Well, i’m a bit late in writing, but since BattleUK was my first event last year, I guess I should write something now that I’ve been going to competitions for a full year.
I’m pretty happy with my performance. My goal was to get into the quarter finals, which i did. I also almost made it into the semi finals. Me and Mark Kempton both had to skate an extra run because the judges couldn’t decide who to send into the semis. In the end Mark won, and I left proud of my self, carrying a new resolve to add some more technical tricks to my arsenal. Overall I placed 9= (which means i tied with 4 other skaters for 9th place) out of 22 skaters, i think.
While i was there I got a new pair of the 2008 Seba Highs, which i’m working on breaking in currently.
Naomi and I also discussed details of starting a world freestyle team, which i’ll write more about soon.
Well, we had BattleUS last week, and it was really an awesome week! There’s the obvious things like all the great skaters and learning new tricks, but we even had plenty of great food, and drew some rather large crowds at Union Squre.
The Union Square sessions
On Wednesday night, Sebastien and Naomi met us at Union Square for our usual skating. We had a much bigger turn out, though, and the energy was really high. Then on Friday, Phil and Jim (from the UK) and Igor, Chloe and Olivier (From France) joined us, and as you can imagine it got even more interesting. The mix of Union Square freestyle with European freestyle slalom actually drew quite a large crowd. So big, in fact, that a break dancing performance that was originally on the other side of the square (two blocks away) actually moved their show right next to us to try to get their crowd back! After these two nights, I was already content with how the event had turned out, and it hadn’t even “officially” begun yet!
The Competitions
The International Battle was great to watch, and we even had two Americans make it to the semi finals (Evan and myself both got 3rd in our semi-final groups, just missing the finals, and tying for 5th place). Then came the US Battle, which was also pretty exciting. You could really see each skater pushing their limits to try and do their best. The top four were me, Evan, Stacy and Denni. Next we had an off-cones freestyle battle, with Team USA vs Team World. It was a bit light hearted and involved lots of trash talk between the teams, but the audience decided that Team USA was the better freestyle team, giving two of the top three spots (1st & 3rd) to Americans. Oh we did speed slalom as well :P.
The Food
I’d be letting a major part of the event slip if I didn’t mention all the great restaurants that the local New York skaters took us too. We had a tour of asia, with some of the best Japanese, Schechaun and Korean food I’ve ever had. Thanks to Pete, Shawn and Young-sang for picking great places to eat.
Woo hoo! Its really tiny, but i’m in a UK Seba ad that will go in a UK skate magazine.
Naomi is gunna buy me a copy, and she send me a scan of it already.
They decided that Sebastien would be good for all the action shots, while Naomi and I would be best to portray the attitude of a true skater.
follow the link for the picture…
Stacy wrote a great review of our PSWC Trip, so i’ll just link to it instead of making up my own less articulate version:
http://www.freestyleskaters.org/2007/06/11/paris-slalom-world-cup/
The venue for BattleUS has finally been approved! We’ll be holding it at Riverbank State Park in NYC. Its a nice outdoor skating rink with a roof overhead, and not too far from Central park (maybe a 15 minute skate, i’ll need to try it out to be sure)
Now there’s tons of other details to figure out, but its a huge relief to have the venue squared, because i’ve officially announced it and people can start buying plane tickets, etc.
Once i get back from PSWC, BattleUS planning will take up most of my free time.
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