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Amsterdamage
The Story of Inline Vert Prelims
By Mike Opalek
Held in the middle of the largest dance party in Europe, Amsterdam got off to a raving start with inline vert prelims.
The first thing that comes to mind about Amsterdam is either the cannabis culture or window shopping in the red light district, but that’s not all this lovely city has to offer. For instance, the Rijksmuseum features numerous works by the Dutch masters of the 17th century, or, if you’re not a Rembrandt fan, you can check out the Van Gogh Museum. If you’re not into paint, check out Anne Frank’s house where she hid with her family for 25 months during WWII.
But let’s face it, the Heineken Factory with its “history of beer” tour is probably the most educational place you’ll visit while in Amsterdam.
The first European stop on the LG Action Sports World Tour is being held in conjunction with one of the biggest electronic music festivals in Europe. The street course, vert ramp and freestyle motocross area is literally surrounded by more than a dozen massive circus tents filled with happy ravers. Besides the all-request music marathon the tour offers to the competing pros, I am being bombarded by techno, trance, house, happy house, jungle, and something else that sounds like they placed a microphone in the chest of an African marathon runner. I’m amazed I can concentrate enough to write this.
The inline vert prelims just finished today, which gave me a nice distraction from all the hell going on in my head. Europe’s best came out to challenge the Yasutoko brothers; Spanish sensations Nel Martin and Borja Fernandez made the trip along with up-and-comer Rich Parker from England. Local hero and 2000 World Champion, Sven Boekhorst took time out from his busy media schedule to do a couple of runs along with some of the Tour regulars like Fabiola da Silva, Ayumi Kawasaki, Marc Englehart, and Shane Yost.
With the wind raging just below tornado level, the danger factor was at an all-time high. Nel Martin started off amazing in both runs, but by mid-run, was pulling coping-high tricks, and, as a result, just missed the finals. Sven didn’t miss a beat with solid head-high airs and notable lip tricks like an alley oop topside soul, and breezed into 6th place. Marc Englehart sketched in his first run, but pulled it together to do every 540 variation in the book. Ayumi and Fabiola each had good runs, and both women qualified for the finals. But when the dust cleared, it came as no surprise that Eito and Takeshi held the top two qualifying spots. They killed the competition, but they were definitely holding back their big tricks for tomorrow’s finals.
»»View the official results from this contest
