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October 17th, 3 months after the British ASA Qualifying event, and time for those Brits who qualified to join the rest of the world for the ASA Pro Tour and Amateur finals in Dallas, Texas.
Out of those who qualified it was Scott Lodge, Chaz Sands,Craig Harrison, Fi Eviston, Matt King, Sarah Lupton, Emma Brown and Sarah Britton who made the trip to compete in the street, with Joey Egan and Rob Parker on vert. Steve from UkSkate.com also made the trip to get some footage which is up on the site.
The flight was long and boring as you would imagine, but was well worth it when you realise you have left all the wet cold days behind for the 80 degree heat of Dallas! We arrived quite late, but Steve drove us down (in his beautiful rented MPV) to the event site to check out the course.
Everything was huge! A 20foot high roll-in leading down to a huge fun box with two spine ramps on one side and a flat box on the other. There was a long kinked rail in one corner with ledges running along side it, and in the middle of this course was a 6-foot high freestanding kinked rail with a fly-off leading up to it! I'm sure that came from Tony Hawks's skateboarding game! The huge 50foot wide vert ramp stood the other side of the V.I.P tent with a huge roll-in on the left hand side, and a gap with coping running over it on the other.
The first day was warm-ups for everyone, with the fun starting on Friday with the amateur street prelims. Unfortunately i couldn't enter due to injury, but everyone else ripped up the joint showing just how good the UK skaters are. Craig Harrison had really good runs charging around the course with sweet spins and grinds. Chaz Sands was as technical as ever with full-cab a/o t/s acids and switch-up, but Chaz found most of the rails a bit low for his liking but found a nice rail outside to hotel to skate instead! Matt King narrowly missed the cut for the finals in 17th place, still skating really well. But Scott rocked the house and qualified in 13th place, he was holding back for the finals. He had the most creative line in the comp (a line which a lot of the pro's used the next day) 360ing off the side of the roll-in into the flatbank following that with a stall on a high backboard. He then charged back to 450 into the roll-in and landed a huge misty flip from the launch of the box to the flatbox next to it. He also landed a huge 720 transfer over a gap of at least 15 foot and a flatspin 540 on a quarter pipe to finish. Scott ended up with 8th place in the final, qualifying as pro. The UK girls all skated really well with Emma Brown in joint 6th place with a good line around the park, Sarah Britton came in second place with tricks like a 540 on the quarter and solid grinds. However it was Sarah Lupton took the event in 1st place with a flawless couple of runs containing the smoothest torque's that blew everyone away.
First thing Saturday morning was the amateur vert prelims and finals. There were only about 25 skaters there, including Joey and me. I didn't exactly skate how I wanted to in my first run, the second seemed to be going ok with a 720 and flair, but then for some reason I decided to fall down the gap! Joey however had a really good couple of runs, balancing f/s torque the whole length of the coping with loads of other technical grinds and a 540 flatspin. He actually managed to get into 3rd place after the prelims, and ended up in joint 5th after the finals, going for a 540 flatspin over the channel in the process!
The Pro vert finals were incredible, it was between the Yasutoko's, Taig and Shane Yost. Takeshi was blasting off with 10-foot high airs and every trick you can think of! Eito and Takeshi both have 1080's now, Eito with the flatspin variation, while Takeshi has it with a mctwist. Shane was consistently pulling forward 1260's and cab 1080's, but Taig stole the event with his dialled as hell double backflips, flatspin 900's and switch 720 corkscrews! Vert is just on another level now.
There were no surprises as to who won the pro street comp, after coming back from winning the x-games it was Jaren Grob who started his run with a 540 into roll-in switching round to 360 the box. His 900 flairs are so clean now as well. Aaron Feinberg skated to second place by balancing a fast slide the whole length of the 6-foot freestanding rail and other tricks such a corkscrew 540's over the box and a transfer from the back of the box to disaster soul on the spine. Thierry Lallemand came in third nailing a far-side soul down the high stair rail, 360 to mistral on another long rail and a big 540 quarter to quarter transfer. The street best trick comp after was nothing less then ridiculous. Jason Stinsman took control of the fun box with double backflips, and getting sooo close to 1260's! Shawn Robertson was doing really creative tricks like cab double fast plant 720's over the box, and he skated up the roll-in, did a misty flip and casually rolled back down.
This was truly a world-class event, well worth going to even if you’re just going to watch. There are now two more British skaters that are ASA pro’s, well done to Scott and Joey. Lets just hope they can make the most of it! Looks like me and everyone else will just have to go back next year!
All that was left to do now was to go and session Eisenbergs skate park and take on the long flight home! - Rob Parker
