May 5 - 6 Ontario, CA

The second day of the World Team Challenge featured the rest of the competitions, so let's start with the street contest. Nothing really extraordinary happened during the street runs. The skaters basically put together solid street runs, which incorporated the tricks they completed during the best trick contests the day before. Ian Brown from Australia in his first ever pro competition skated in place of the injured Josh Clarke and put together a flawless run to win the street competition. There must be something in that Aussie blood that helps them create winning lines.

Up next was street doubles. I'm sure your mothers have all said it, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." So I'm going to reserve any comments I may have on this event and leave it by saying that the Australians won the event and we won't be seeing a street doubles run ever again. On to the Vert ramp.

The vert ramp saw four competitions of its own during the World Team Challenge: best trick, high air, doubles and a regular vert comp. Due to the fact that I've seen more than my fair share of vert runs over the past year and a half, I'll just let you know that Taig Khris once again won the vert competition. He has finally worked out all the bugs in his runs and looks to be really unbeatable this year. I was most interested in the high air and best trick competitions, mainly due to the fact that you don't get to see them very often and I wanted to see Matt Lindenmuth take another attempt at the double backflip.

The best trick comp was first and the top guns threw out their biggest tricks. Shane Yost and Eito Yasutoko entered a battle of their own - a battle of spins that is. Shane was up first and landed a switch 1080, which Eito matched with a flat spin 1080, but hey that was just to get some points on the board. The big stuff was pulled out next with Eito making a couple of attempts at a 1440 before hurting his ankle and pulling out, leaving Shane Yost the winner with a completed forward 1260.

Matt Lindenmuth held the spotlight during the entire best trick competition. Everyone knew what he was going to try and they all wanted to see him land it. He went through his normal routine of finding the right spot on the ramp to throw the double and made a couple of attempts that were off. On the final attempt everything looked perfect and he even got his feet down under him on the ramp. We're not sure what happened but he washed out and hurt his wrist which stopped the attempts for that weekend. Enter the following weekend and the TAZ Atti-Tour, which just happened to feature a best trick competition of its own on the same ramp. This contest was in front of a huge crowd, bikers and skateboarders combined. The rollerbladers ruled the day with the biggest crowd support and Matt was set to cap the day off perfectly. We'll skip ahead to the end of the contest where you should picture Matt standing on top of the roll all by himself with the crowd chanting "On More Time!" He dropped in and landed the double. I think we knew he landed it even before he did. He was halfway up the opposite wall before he realized he was still on his feet.

The vert doubles were all we had left and it was clear from the beginning who was going to win. The European team of Taig Khris and Nel Martin had the competition almost wrapped up before they began. I mean they even had matching clothes on, who couldn't give it to them? Ok, to be honest it wasn't just their clothes, they skated great too, and they got so close a couple of times Nel had to duck his head to avoid getting hit.

That's about it for the weekend, the only thing left is to tell you which team came out on top. I don't really think the other teams even had a chance to beat them, well maybe the Australians did, but the European team won and won easily. Following a way back in second were the Australians followed by the Americas and the Asians who were only separated by a point. Overall the weekend was a big success and a great change from the normal competitions that we see all year long. As to whether the Europeans will hold onto their crown next year, well we'll just have to wait and see.