This past weekend I travelled to Bremen, Germany to attend the first Freestyle Slalom Festival. It was a great event with a huge turnout. I’m sure it will become an annual freestyle spot now. The weekend was a great balance of competitions and just doing slalom with everyone when no official competitions were underway. Practicing with all the big names like Seba, Igor, JB, Phil and Nathan was worth the trip alone, never mind that I actually won the amateur battle! Here’s my write up of the weekend.

We did tons of skating over Friday, Saturday and Sunday. A small group of skaters showed up Friday night including Seba and Igor, so our small group got to take advantage of some personal training time with the two of them. This totally rocked! Seba worked on heeling and toe-heel spinning with me, both of which I was able to put into my battle runs thanks to his help.

On saturday we skated for at least a few hours before any official events started which was great, because i got to meet tons of skaters, and so many great skaters showed me things i didn’t know yet. Overall this event had tons of unstructured time for skaters to do whatever they wanted, which really made it worth the trip. The “Rollersport Staddion” where it all took place is basically a perfectly smooth cement floor the size of three basketball courts at least. It was perfectly level too.

Sometime in the early afternoon we started with the amateur battle. Like i said, i worked-in the stuff Seba taught me, and I also put in the multiple grande voltes linked together in a row, which JB showed me saturday morning. I think these things help distinguish my runs. At each level, I hoped to go to the next level, but wasn’t sure if I would. Each time i got to the next round i was more and more surprised. It was really exciting to compete with people in the same skill level as me. (as opposed to battleuk, which was really fun, but i knew I wouldn’t get out of the first round)

When I got to the finals round I actually started planning my runs based on what the other 3 skaters were doing. I could see we all had a chance to win it so I wanted to make sure I didn’t let anyone do something where i hadn’t done something comparable. One nice thing about being in the final four was that I got to skate for the whole battle, instead of turning into a spectator at some point.

After each skater did all four runs, we each did a “special move.” Basically one move that you do to impress the judges. For the finals round I wanted to do something unique and I decided to do a union square style hand plant that Evan had taught me. I felt like it was the perfect move to say “Hey, I’m here representing Philadelphia and NYC”. After I did it, I knew it was a good choice because everyone seemed to react positively.

They ran all the other events before announcing any results, so I quickly forgot about my competition and started having fun again (actually the battle was really fun, but its always more fun when no-one’s watching). I tried to at least talk to all the great skaters there and took some new moves from as many as I could. I spent the rest of the day either skating or watching the other competitions.

When the results were announced I really couldn’t believe it as they went from 4th to 2nd and hadn’t called my name yet. All the London guys (JB, Phil and Nathan) hung out with me, and generally made me feel like one of their own had won. They chanted “U-S-A” for me. It was nice to have a surrogate country to take me in like that. I got a “trophy” of the “Four Musicians of Bremen” (a chick, cat, dog and donkey) and a set of 231mm Seba frames.

In the Pro Battle, Igor came in first, ahead of M.Gurevich (Rus) and Chris Fessel(Ger). JB came in fourth in the crazy speed competition (yes they did crazy as the speed move). Phil was in the top 8 of the Pro battle- probably would have been 6th, but they didn’t run the battle for 6-8th places. Oliver, my new friend from Finland proved that two guys skating all by themselves really can learn some tricks: He got 4th in the Pro battle! Congrats to everyone.

On Sunday there were no official events, just more skating. Me and the london guys hung out with two really cool guys from Finland all day. Most of the skaters had gone home at this point, but JB and Nathan taught me some more tricks, and JB helped me make up a list of things to practice so I don’t forget them all. I think JB and Naomi are going to start fighting over who taught me more moves in the near future.