From 1st to 3rd of August in Hannover, took place the second issue
of the Inline Games: last year’s issue was such a success
that it encouraged the organisers to do it again. The festival
took place at Klagesmarkt – just like last year –
a big place in the town center.
A huge variety of roller-skating activities were planned:
- skate tours around Hannover
- workshops (slalom-skating, gadgets on casters…)
- shows (inline basket ball, freestyle team battle)
- competitions: the European Championship in street skating on
Saturday, an Inline Biathlon and Street Races (part of the Nordliga
and Nordcup Serie) on Sunday, and freestyle slalom battles during
the whole weekend.
The Battle competition
which took place during the Inline Games 2008 was a main event
(2 cones) of the World Slalom Series (WSS) circuit.
Freestyle battle met with a huge success: sixty skaters registered,
of nine different European countries. Germany was present in force
– quantitatively as qualitatively, with riders such as Rudy
Op’t Velt (#5 in June 2008 WSS world ranking), Mischa Gurevich
(#12), Martin Sloboda (#22), Pierre Kunneman (#47), Christian
Fessel (#122)… to name just a few of them ; The other countries
were also represented by their champions : the Italians Tiziano
Ferrari (#50) and Lucas Ulivieri (#125), the Russians Polina Semenova
(#3 women) and Maksim Shvyrev (#54), the French Igor Cheremetieff
(#1), Xuan Le (#7), Fanny Violeau (#16) and Chloé Seyrès
(#1), the Spanish people whose improvement is rather promissing
(particularly Adrián Almazán (#298)), the English
Jon Bell et JB Milleret (franglish). Let’s mention also
the Dutch, the Belgians, and the Polish people. The list is too
exhaustive, thus I will sum up as following: the upper crust of
Europe was there, the fight was tough, and the elimination merciless.
The
slalom area (bigger than last year’s) was on a paved walkway
(~20*20 slabs) quite slippery (dust ?) with a rather big slope,
I must say. There were terraces on both sides of the area, and
a platform at the end of it for the DJ to mix. For two days, we’ve
been skating to good old rhythm’n soul sounds! …and
in the role of the vintage speaker, Pierre Kunneman who hanged
on to the mic ‘till the end in spite of his broken voice
(“we had a long night” he apologized on Sunday morning…)
The site
of the festival opened on Friday afternoon. The hotel being on
the other side of the street, the skaters, who were arriving one
by one, were inevitably passing by the spot to go and check in
the hotel… as a result, the afternoon became a giant slalom
session which stopped only late in the evening.
The freestyle event was planned on two days (Saturday and Sunday).
But, taking heed of the weather forecast (not really encouraging
for Sunday), the organisation considered it more careful to change
the timetable and to complete the more slalom events as possible
on Saturday. The planning, basically light (speed slalom and qualifications
for freestyle battle on Saturday, and freestyle battles on Sunday),
becomes much more intensive, concentrated on Saturday: speed slalom
qualifications in the morning, then from 1 PM till the sun goes
down (10 PM) amateur freestyle battle, men pro freestyle qualifications
and battle, and women pro freestyle battle.
What a surprise when opening the curtains on Sunday morning…
it was shiny and bright! After a general sleep in, we resumed
the competition in the sun with the speed KO systems. As there
was still time to spare, we improvised a freestyle team battle:
the passers-by of Sunday afternoon were treated to a show-contest
gathering most of the enlisted skaters.
The whole afternoon was shiny, ‘till the podiums that ended
in the rain!
After this overlook of the unfolding of the weekend, let’s
get into the details of the different slalom events…
The Speed Slalom Battle
As
mentioned above, the speed slalom took place in two times: time
qualifications on Saturday morning and KO systems on Sunday afternoon.
For both of their time qualification runs, the skaters go one
by one – according to the rules applied for the WSS, in
order to respect the equity of conditions to the maximum. There
were 35 men enlisted for speed slalom, and 8 women.
The times were rather slow: for men, Luca Ulivieri ranks first
of the qualifications in 5.45 with one penalty; he is followed
by Igor Cheremetieff, Sebastien Laffargue, JB Milleret, and Tiziano
Ferrari – the rest runs over 6 seconds. As for women, Chloé
Seyrès (6.1) and Fanny Violeau (6.27) are the only ones
to run bellow 7 seconds.
These wheezy times are justified partly because of the strictness
of the line judges who were extremely thorough in their faulse-start
checking. Thus everybody had to be careful and they slowed down
their reaction time to the start.
The
KO systems were postponed to Sunday, the priority being given
to freestyle (in case of bad weather on Sunday). For the Men Speed
Slalom, only the 16 best times qualified (and all the 8 women
went through the qualifications).
Women first!
The skaters going through the quarter finals are: the French Chloé
Seyrès and Fanny Violeau, the Russian Polina Semenova,
and the Polish Renata Bugalska. In semi finals, Chloé and
Fanny eliminate respectively Polina and Renata. The two French
girls of the SebaTeam are meeting in a restless final. The first
round goes indisputably to Chloé. During the second round,
Chloé stalls, manages – too late – to re-enter
the slalom line and finishes by a long slide on her hip (and the
rest) at the end of the line… (I heard it was spectacular…
I didn’t witness it because Chloé, it’s me…
but I fully felt it from the inside!). Each skater-girl gets a
round, a third one is needed. On the third round, Chloé
is slightly in front of Fanny but kicks a cone (and punctuates
her run with a second fall), and Fanny wins the third round…
and the final! As for the consolation final, it is Polina who
wins and ranks 3rd.
For men, no real surprise as for the first round: nearly all the
favourites go through to the quarter finals. No problem either
for the quarter finals groups, except for the second one opposing
Tiziano Ferrari (ITA) and JB Milleret (Franglish). Tizianno wins
with a lead of a hundredth on his winning round!
In semi finals, the outcome becomes less certain: the first semi
final brings together the two Italians Luca Ulivieri and Tiziano
Ferrari, and the second semi final the two French Sebastien Laffargue
and Igor Cheremetieff. The times get closer. Luca goes through,
and Seba eliminates himself with a strike on the determining third
round against Igor, who gets to the final against Luca. It is
Luca who finally wins the speed competition. Igor, despite good
starts (his times are better than Luca’s), makes too many
cone mistakes, and cannot compete with Luca’s regularity.
As for the consolation final: on the first round Seba makes up
for his semi final strikes in achieving the best time of the competition,
but Tiziano resists and wins the two following rounds.
Podium
Speed Battle Men
1. Luca Ulivieri (ITA)
2. Igor Cheremetieff (FRA)
3. Tiziano Ferrari (ITA)
The Amateur Freestyle Battle
It
is the Amateurs who open the freestyle series, on Sunday afternoon.
The 12 Amateurs had almost the same treatment as the Pro skaters:
same ranking by groups of three, two runs of 30 seconds per skater
– and three for the final. As for the last trick extra,
it was for the final only (as in the Pro Battle). The Champion,
Ortwin Carstocea, and his Vice, Jens Brökelmann, won their
qualification for the Pro Freestyle Battle.
This
time, Men first (no jealousy)! They were 32 (included the Amateur
first two finalists). As mentioned above, the upper crust of Europe
was present, and the massacre of cruel eliminations began as soon
as the beginning of the qualifications (round before the quarter
finals: eight groups of four skaters).
Paradoxically enough, it is the very first group which lead the
skaters a merry dance: group 1 was made up of Igor Cheremetieff
(FRA), Tiziano Ferrari (FRA), Maxim Shvyrev (RUS), and Jens Brökelmann
(GER – 2nd of the Amateur Battle). It is Tiziano Ferrari
(ITA), 3rd at the PSWC ‘08 and 4th at the Italian Slalom
Battle ‘08, who will not go through the qualifications:
they were three candidates (Igor, Max and Tiziano) for only two
places and the jury made their choice.
Nothing to mention as for the other groups of qualifications for
the quarter finals. Some skaters are already a cut above the rest:
in group 2, Kim Taehong the Korean Londoner; in group 3, Christian
Fessel (GER), winner of the FSWE Weekend ’08 at M-Gladbach,
gets qualified for the quarter finals, along with Ronny Robert
(NED), the Deutch Champion of 2003 coming back (?); in groups
4, 5 and 6, Mischa Gurevich (Germano-russian), Xuan Le (FRA),
3rd at the Inline Games ‘07, and Luca Ulivieri (ITA), 1st
at the Italian Battle ’08, get to the quarter finals; and
finally in groups 7 and 8, let’s point out the 13-year-old
Martin Sloboda (GER), a very promising young skater who already
attracted attentions on other battles this year, Rudy Op’t
Veld (GER), 2nd at the PSWC ‘08 and 4th at Battle Moscow
’08, who came in force with surprises on top of his usual
technical arsenal, and last but not least Pierre ‘the Apache’
Kunneman (GER), the double-caps man simultaneously playing the
parts of the fire-setting speaker and of the vintage styleslalom-skater.
During the
quarter finals, the cleansing goes on. End of the adventure for
Ronny Robert, who, despite his undoubted style, has fallen behind
with technique. It is the end also for Maksim Shvyrev, who had
fighted against Tiziano Ferrari for the qualifications, sanctioned
for having repeated too many times the same tricks (internal chicken
leg spins which he masters with 2 or 3 turns, and a good wheeling
technique) – tricks he does not execute as well as in the
qualifications. Pierre Kunneman also takes his leave, beaten by
Luca Ulivieri, who decides to opt for fast knitting execution
rather than for technique, and by Xuan Le, King of Style with
perfect toe spins despite the slope, who begins to have good fun
also with wheeling tricks… anyway the latter was allowed
to qualify but only just: the jury had asked for a last trick
to decide betwin Xuan and Adrián Almazán (SPA),
the improving Spanish skater. Finally Xuan’s back heel wheeling
on 7 cones puts him in front of Adrián’s 10 Korean
spins, most of them out of the line.
The semi-finals are a real battlefield, the skaters trying to
kill each other with ultra-technical tricks to win their ticket
to the finals.
The first semi-final opposes Cheremetieff, Christian Fessel, Xuan
Le, and Martin Sloboda. Igor has been dominating his half of the
chart since the beginning of the battle and qualifies easily:
he steadily reiterates mastered forward to backward wheelings
from one round to another, controlled backward wheelings, always
with this power of execution and this dexterity in the transition
of tricks that characterise Igor; Strangely enough, he does not
manage to do any good seven (Slope? Stress? Both?). Chris is undoubtedly
extremely well at ease on one wheel, but though he has improved
a lot in the mastery of his tricks (more balanced, and better
control of his arms) it is not enough to get into the finals compared
to Martin who is much more balanced and not less technical: balanced
sevens on 4-5 cones, mastered backward wheelings and forward to
backward wheelings, and his skating is very smooth. As for Xuan,
he brings a very nice touch of style, in the middle of these three
relentless challengers of technique. Unfortunately, the style
criterion alone is not enough to get him through.
The second semi-final gathers more various styles: Kim Taehong,
Mischa Gurevich, Luca Uliviero and Rudy Op’t Velt. Taehong
plays somehow the same part as Xuan in this second semi-final:
smooth and stylish but technically weaker than the three other
skaters. Mischa will always surprise me with his capacity to swallow
the 20 cones of the line at a hallucinating
speed… beside his execution speed, Mischa has other assets:
an excellent mastery of chicken legs (three turns… easy!)
and original but none the less technical tricks (frontwards heel
Korean spins, real frontwards reverse nelsons – the foot
in the back in the position on an internal wiper…) Rather
surprising discrepancy when you realize that the guy can hardly
manage a few cones doing wheeling! Compared with him, there is
Luca, who has similar assets: same speed of execution, and good
technical tricks. Maybe is he less original than Mischa, but he
seems to be more efficient as he ranks 2nd of the group, and qualifies
for the finals. As for Rudy, he is the one who has been dominating
the other half of the charts since the very beginning. With his
technical arsenal he stands a cut above the rest: wheeling whatever
the direction (frontward to backward, or backward to frontward),
sevens whatever the direction (frontward, backward, internal,
external …make your choice!). Moreover, with his brand new
transitions, he is ready to seriously challenge Igor, the favourite,
unbeaten ‘till then on a battle competition.
Before
the finals, the consolation finals: there meet Chris, Xuan, Taehong,
and Misha. It is Xuan who wins the consolation finals with credit
(no doubt the King of Style had his fun), in front of Mischa,
Taehong, and Chris.
At
least, it is time for the finals. A novelty is brought as for
the position order: the skaters can choose their position, one
after the other. Igor’s turn first: he chooses to go 4th,
in order to have a general view and to have the time to build
up his runs according to the tricks of his adversaries. Rudy chooses
to be in 3rd position, Martin in 2nd, and Luca is then 1st to
go. The four skaters remain faithful to their own skating. We
can distinguish two internal challenges: the two titans Igor and
Rudy compete for the 1st place, while Martin and Luca try to get
the 3rd place. Igor seems more stressed than usual. Is it due
to the changing of position order? Usually 1st to go, he is used
to be the one who leads the dance. But being the last to go, he
has to analyse, synthesize, and think: which probably triggers
unwelcomed stress more easily. He misses most of the attempted
technical tricks (nevertheless, he manages a nice backwards seven,
and a good line of sitting tricks on the 120). On the contrary,
Rudy gets the upper hand thanks to some original, stylish and
complicated transitions: a backward footgun transition from the
80 to the 50 directly linked to a heel seven; changes in directions
of rotation (Korean spin, to controlled slower block, to heel-toe
backward compas).
The last tricks: the last chance to make the difference. Luca
does kasatchocs to exhaustion, Martin does the same with heel
wheeling – rather tricky because of the slope. Rudy tries
a backward heel wheeling on the 50 but does not manage more than
a dozen of cones in both of his tries… Igor takes up the
challenge and makes an attempt of backward toe wheeling on the
80… same result as Rudy: not better than Rudy’s dozen
of cones.
The
results follow immediately:
1. Rudy Op’t Veld (GER)
2. Igor Cheremetieff (FRA)
3. Luca Ulivieri (ITA)
4. Martin Sloboda (GER)
The Women Pro Freestyle Battle
Only
4 women had registered for the Amateur Battle. In order to get
a consistent women competition, both categories (amateur and pro)
were mixed: this enabled to form 4 groups of 3 (12 skaters), and
thus to begin with quarter finals.
The regulars
qualify: in groupe 1, Chloé Seyrès (FRA) and Renata
Bugalska (POL); in group 2, Fanny Violeau (FRA) and Lidia Wardzinska
(POL), who made great improvements since the PSWC ‘08; in
group 3, Miriam Kwasny (GER) and Cheryl Evans (UK); and in group
4, Polina Semenova (RUS) and Ragnhild Cornelisse (NED). Note:
first competition for Marianno Rio (FRA) – she did not go
through the first round, but keep a close eye on the girl, given
the evolution she had in just three months of slalom-skating…
No real suspense
either for the semi finals: Chloé and Fanny take the upper
hand in their group, and Polina and Lidia make their presence
felt in group 2.
The finals
are more complicated. Not only because it is becoming to get really
dark (it is 9:30 PM), but also because at the end of the three
runs plus the last trick, the jury cannot decide between the skaters.
Just like in the men final there are two internal challenges:
Chloé versus Polina for the 1st place, and Fanny versus
Lidia for the 3rd. It has to be admitted that the girls were a
little tired after a whole day of questionings (when will be their
turn to go? In the middle of the afternoon before the men? In
the late afternoon after the men? The morrow?) and of warm ups
(in case one of the first two options would be picked) –
the planning was vague: the aim of the day was to complete the
biggest part of the event as possible. The finalists did not skate
exceptionally well (there were even one or two quite mediocre
runs), which did not make the job easier for the jury. No hesitation
for the 3rd place: Fanny is above Lidia. As for the 1st place,
it is finally Polina who gets it – after a long debate:
during the whole final, maybe was she less committed than Chloé,
but her finishing was neater. In fact it is the last trick which
brought doubt into the jury’s mind, as Chloé’s
last trick was better evaluated than Polina’s: Polina did
a Korean spins combo on the 80, and Chloé managed 18 cones
doing a spin footgun on the 80 – while Fanny managed 20
cones doing backward footgun on the 80, and Lidia tried to manage
10 cones doing toe reverse eagle on the 80.
Podium
Women Pro Freestyle Battle
1. Polina Semenova (RUS)
2. Chloé Seyrès (FRA)
3. Fanny Violeau (FRA)
The Freestyle Team Battle
As
there was still some time left on Sunday afternoon after the speed
KO systems – because everything had been completed the day
before – we organised a team battle contest. The riders
got into groups of three according to their affinities. Fourteen
teams confronted one another in duels: six runs for each team,
and a jury purposely impressionable by the public to decide between
the teams. The ranking did not much matter: the aim was to enable
maximum skaters to participate, which made a show not only varied
(lots of skaters thus lots of different styles) but also lively
in which the public could interact.
No
holds were bared: this gave place to double and triple skating
– with more or less coordination, to small sketches and
funny-skating shows, to more or less team strategy… but
above all to lots of giggles (principally during the qualification
phase).
The
more the contest went on the more the tone grew serious, and the
more the teams – who had not prepared anything – began
to repeat themselves, and I think it ran out of steam. Finally
the public designate Team Italian Style (Luca, Tizianno and Francesco)
as the winner of the contest (coaxed by the Italian touch of humour?),
in front of Team Russia (Polina, Max and Mischa).
Nevertheless,
it was a very interesting experience, and I do not think we could
have provided a better promotional show in favour of slalom-skating.
By
way of tribute to the freestyle teams, here is the listing of
their names:
- Amateurs Team
- 4Wheels Freestyle Team
- Skatemeile Team
- Francofun
- Team Russia
- Italian Style
- Just Fun
- The Threemen Show
- Phil and the JBs
- Vintage Team
- Wundershaft
- Style Libero
- Threesome
- nb : I know there is one missing… Sorry I just did not
catch it.
The Battle competition
which took place during the Inline Games 2008 was a main event
(2 cones) of the World Slalom Series (WSS) circuit.
The site
of the festival opened on Friday afternoon. The hotel being on
the other side of the street, the skaters, who were arriving one
by one, were inevitably passing by the spot to go and check in
the hotel… as a result, the afternoon became a giant slalom
session which stopped only late in the evening.
Women first!
The skaters going through the quarter finals are: the French Chloé
Seyrès and Fanny Violeau, the Russian Polina Semenova,
and the Polish Renata Bugalska. In semi finals, Chloé and
Fanny eliminate respectively Polina and Renata. The two French
girls of the SebaTeam are meeting in a restless final. The first
round goes indisputably to Chloé. During the second round,
Chloé stalls, manages – too late – to re-enter
the slalom line and finishes by a long slide on her hip (and the
rest) at the end of the line… (I heard it was spectacular…
I didn’t witness it because Chloé, it’s me…
but I fully felt it from the inside!). Each skater-girl gets a
round, a third one is needed. On the third round, Chloé
is slightly in front of Fanny but kicks a cone (and punctuates
her run with a second fall), and Fanny wins the third round…
and the final! As for the consolation final, it is Polina who
wins and ranks 3rd.
It
is the Amateurs who open the freestyle series, on Sunday afternoon.
The 12 Amateurs had almost the same treatment as the Pro skaters:
same ranking by groups of three, two runs of 30 seconds per skater
– and three for the final. As for the last trick extra,
it was for the final only (as in the Pro Battle). The Champion,
Ortwin Carstocea, and his Vice, Jens Brökelmann, won their
qualification for the Pro Freestyle Battle.
Paradoxically enough, it is the very first group which lead the
skaters a merry dance: group 1 was made up of Igor Cheremetieff
(FRA), Tiziano Ferrari (FRA), Maxim Shvyrev (RUS), and Jens Brökelmann
(GER – 2nd of the Amateur Battle). It is Tiziano Ferrari
(ITA), 3rd at the PSWC ‘08 and 4th at the Italian Slalom
Battle ‘08, who will not go through the qualifications:
they were three candidates (Igor, Max and Tiziano) for only two
places and the jury made their choice.
The semi-finals are a real battlefield, the skaters trying to
kill each other with ultra-technical tricks to win their ticket
to the finals.
As
there was still some time left on Sunday afternoon after the speed
KO systems – because everything had been completed the day
before – we organised a team battle contest. The riders
got into groups of three according to their affinities. Fourteen
teams confronted one another in duels: six runs for each team,
and a jury purposely impressionable by the public to decide between
the teams. The ranking did not much matter: the aim was to enable
maximum skaters to participate, which made a show not only varied
(lots of skaters thus lots of different styles) but also lively
in which the public could interact.