Oct 14 Las Vegas, NV
With just about every top Vert professional in the world attending, the vert competition at the ASA World Championships was set up to be the best competition of the year. I'll let you know now that it lived up to its potential. The 56 ft wide vert ramp was set up under the lights inside the All-American Sports Park and took place in front of a pumped up crowd that packed every available seat in the arena. Even the Macho Man Randy Savage filled a seat atop the ramp and was held in complete awe of the skating. Let's face it a vert comp is ten times more impressive when you're watching it from the top of the ramp.

The warm-ups were finished and it was time to get busy, there was after all $10,000 on the line for a first place finish. Andre Englehart was the only American to make the vert finals but he couldn't overtake the tough European competition and stayed in 10th. Nel Martin out of Barcelona, Spain made it to the World Championship finals in his rookie year and skated well, using tricks like a stale grabbed 900 and easily the best alley-oop top souls to take the 9th spot. Sven Boekhorst also skated pretty well in the finals. Sven has some of the most technical coping grinds on the tour. He has some of the best looking true spin fishbrains and true spin topside pornstars there are. Sven was able to keep his eighth place finish with a good first run.

Shane Yost had a rough couple runs during the finals. He would start out well but for some reason he kept getting squirly in the air and had to fight to keep his balance through the transitions. Shane was still able to skate well enough to take 7th and with that finish was also able to take home the crown of Pro Tour Champion over Cesar Mora. Cesar finished in fourth place with two nearly identical runs. Had either Shane placed one spot lower of Cesar one spot higher, the crown would have gone to Cesar, they were that close. In fact I think there was only one point separating them at the end.

Two more Australians took the 6th and 5th spots. Manuel Billiris and Matt Salerno both skated very well. Manuel was going higher than I had seen him go all year and Matt again used his ability to sky higher than anyone else did to take the 5th spot. Matt spins 720 so high and slow that they don't really even look like 720's anymore. Takeshi Yasutoko took home the 3rd spot for both him and his brother Eito, who injured himself a day earlier and wasn't competing. Takeshi used the same run he had been using most of the year to lock up the 3rd spot.

The big story was between the top two finishers, Taig Khris and Tobias Bucher. Toby was in first place after the prelims so he rode last in the finals. This caused some questioning of the judge¹s choice for first place so let me explain. When it came time for Toby's final run, the crowd was on its feet and going nuts and Toby went huge and never missed a trick. We were all so wrapped up in the emotion of the final run that when it was announced that Toby had taken second place and Taig won so of the crowd wasn't very pleased. We had forgotten that Taig had gone bigger than anyone had that day, 10ft airs and more. Taig also had not missed a single trick; the judges did a great job and showed us what they get paid for.

The Vert Best Trick Competition took place right after the finals and with the crowd as excited as they were; the tricks were going to be crazy. I'll start out by telling you that Matt Lindemuth won the competition by gapping out of the pipe with a 360 stall on one of the quardrailings and then jumping back in. He won but it wasn¹t the craziest trick that happened that night. He just happened to be one of the few that landed their tricks. Michael Bennett spun a 540 true mizou over the gap and Taig Khris landed a true kindgrind over it too. Randy Marino and Jaren Grob were completely out of their minds during the contest. Randy tried gapping out of the half pipe over a guard railing

and to the bleachers. This was at least a 25-ft gap! Jaren in the mean time tried launching up out of the pipe to a rail that ran away from the vert. If had missed the wrong way he would have dropped a good 15ft to the hard floor below. Definitely some of the craziest things I've ever seen on skates.