After an informal street session at Keramikos, Gazi in downtown Athens and post-skate mischief on Friday night

between the local and out of town skaters Saturday morning (more like afternoon) came quick

and everyone was juiced to finally check out the King Kongs Flipout event in....

It was about a month that the inline community across Greece had heard that a contest was set up

for inline skating at this event and after a lot of discussion regarding rumors about the layout of the

skatepark, competition hours, format and dates, the convoy of vehicles setting out from Syeah Skate

headquarters in Neo Psixiko Athens was on its way to King Kongs Flipout.

Wake up, Warm up

Its about 4:00 pm and there are a few inline skaters warming up around the skate park amongst skateboarders. Already there is some foreshadowing of the events to come. Most of the bladers under 18 have been at the park from earlier in the day and are already trying to push there best tricks and abilities. It’s almost as if they’re trying to squeeze in a few more minuets of practice on that trick they can almost land but haven’t yet in the hopes of busting it out so they can use it during the contest, but to no avail as of yet. The over 18s are rolling around casually, getting a sense for the park, eachother and the whole environment in the hopes of having a good time. As everyone starts to warm up and the park starts to groove the announcement for “Everyone who is not rollerblading to please leave the skate park area” and things start to heat up as people start to adjust to the skate park laid before them, and prepare to make due. After some frustration and a lot of confusion over the competition layout a 10 min open session on the low rail would determine who goes on to the larger fun box to compete in what is going to be the ‘final’ again in an open session format, one for the under 18s and one for the over 18’s.

Under 18

The under 18’s went mental. Everyone was really impressed especially on the low rail. They were pulling out tricks not seen during warm-ups and its debatable whether some of them had never tried those tricks before. Testament to the fact that they really went crazy and gave it there all. Personally it would have been difficult to decide a winner since they all did really well. On the fun box the lack of experience showed, the tricks were less impressive but again for their level no one could complain. The climax came from when Themis Antoniadis decided to just roll off the bank that was used for a run up to the fun box and grind the edge of the basketball hoop behind it with a royal, then he went back again to back-farv it. In my opinion the best trick of the under 18’s although he didn’t win a podium position. Nice skating…bravo

Over 18

Unfortunately the same could not be said for the over 18’s. There seemed to be a lot of lethargy from the guys. It seems as if the crowd was making the over 18’s nervous and it didn’t work to their advantage like it did with the under 18’s. Some nice tricks done by guys like Spyros Balaroutsos were done but not on the level that I personally know some of these guys can skate. Nice skating from Nick Kouros, understated as always but nice. It wouldn’t seem so bad if they were having fun at least but even that didn’t seem to be the case for most. Accidents kept happening with the fun boxes because of the last min adjustments. I saw at least 3 people get the foot stuck between the box’s and Panos bashed his knee and was out of the contest before it started. As the competition moved from the low rail to the big grind box people were still too nervous. The organizers didn’t help with this since they would turn the lights off and put a colourful display of lights and music followed by comments on the Mic which made the whole thing seem like a rock concert rather than an inline competition.

;>Luckily thou Odiseas Selemazidis (see pic above) saved the day and won the contest by pulling off some huge 540’s over the gap and a mind melting disaster fakie 360 to soyale down the rail. Everyone threw in the towel right there and Gooda won the contest.

All in all

An inline competition like this was long overdue. Ok… it had a lot of imperfections and mistakes. The rollerbladers weren’t handled very well and many were disappointed but this is just the beginning. For a first serious competition it wasn’t so bad, and with a few more both the organizer and the Bladers will adjust to competitions like this and the overall result will be more fun for everyone. As far as the exposure it got our sport, its debatable… Nova was there at King Kongs and interviewed Mr. Balaroutsos (who many felt was underperforming that day). That’s a step in the right direction. The most important thing is that competitions like this will happen again as this was just the beginning. You can read the forum thread after the event here and also view the poll taken about what peoples opinion was until we get our own up and running here at Bladesick.com.

You can watch the vid from the contest here

Written by :

Antihero

 

Comments (5)

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written by George Sakoulas, January 07, 2009

By the way, paratirise kaneis ton idrota pou fevgei apo to kefali tou odisea sthn defterh photo? Its an awsome photo genika. Pios thn evgale? Tsam fadazome...

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Yo-yo
written by George Sakoulas, January 07, 2009

ti Yo re?

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written by Balaroutsos Spiros, January 07, 2009

:o YO

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Vid
written by George Sakoulas, January 06, 2009

The video with part of SYEAH crew commentary is here

http://www.bladesick.com/tv.html?task=videodirectlink&id=27

A higher quality edit will be uploaded and featured later this month.

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vid
written by piperos, December 29, 2008

where's the vid?

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