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| INTERVIEW
of RUDY OP’T VELD The Battle Discovery of the 2008 Season Unnoticed at the Paris Slalom World
Cup ’07 (May) in the Amateur Category, Rudy’s performance
at Battle UK II : Attack of the Cones, only six months later (October
’07), was much more striking: he finishes 2nd of the Freestyle
Battle! Not that bad – and quite promising – for a guy
who started skating only one year before…
- Name: Rudy Op´t Veld
¤ A personal definition? How would you define freestyle? Freestyle slalom means more to me
than only skating around the cones; it’s more a new kind of
lifestyle. It’s a way to express yourself with your personal
style. It’s a chance to escape from your everyday life.
¤ How long have you been practising freestyle slalom skating? My first year on skate was 2005, but only normal fitness skating, nothing special… then I started with slalom skating in 2006.
I saw the “Influences” video of Sebastien Laffargue on the Internet, and after the first minute, I knew that this is a thing I will try to do.
I think it was the individuality witch each skater can bring to his style, you know. I was really impressed how it is possible to move so smooth on skates and do so crazy tricks like spinning on one wheel, what was unbelievable to me as I saw it the first time?.
¤ What are your influences : Did you train on your own, with other people (emulation) ? What was the role of the media (internet, websites, videos) in your training ? I like to train together with my
friends, because it’s fun and we can share our ideas for new
tricks, or work on a “double slalom”. So I can say,
I got a lot of influences, but from the first day on, I want to
find my own style and create my own tricks and combinations. ¤ What are the key-moments in your evolution ? A very important moment was our first meeting with the skaters from Cologne in summer 2006; it was my first meeting with “real” slalom skaters ;-) The following events were also very important, especially the event in Moscow in March 2008 [Battle Moscow], because it was my first travel with team Seba, and a chance to see a different kind of skating (from the Russians and from Kim Sung Jin). That was a weekend with a lot of inspirations.
¤ Titles you are proud of? You’ve just won the second edition of the Inline games in Hannover, in front of Igor Cheremetieff, unbeaten in battle competitions till then. How do you feel about it? Yeah, the inline games was a great event. After the first round I knew a had a good day, and after my bad performance in Rom, I really want to do better ;-) but I never thought that I could be first, because there were so many really good skaters and my only concern was to show a good performance and have fun. And I had fun ? especially in the final to skate together with Igor, Luca and Martin, and made a good show. After they publish the results, I was really surprised, and it was a strange feeling… I can’t rally describe it ? But more important to me was the nice conversation between all the skaters, and results are only results, you know. ;-)
When I go to an event, and skate in competition, I want to have fun. And I really enjoy the battle competitions, because you see your opponents in a directly comparison. So you can say to yourself “Okay when I risk one of my best tricks maybe a can go to the next round” that’s really exciting. Individual was okay; it was nice to meet the skaters, talk to them and had a nice time. But the competition mode is not my favourite way of skating, because you do your 90sec run, and than you just have to wait. Both modes have there strengths, but for myself, I prefer the battle competitions.
That’s dependent
on the place where we skate. In cities, when a lot of people watching
us, I skate for style, just simple tricks und standard combinations.
But most of the time we skate on a quite place, or in our hall,
than it’s only technical training and creating new tricks
or working on difficult combinations. ¤ What aspects do you like best in slalom? What are you favourite kinds of tricks? Hehe, I think I’m known as a very technical skater, but that’s only for competitions, I don’t really like the way I skate in competitions ? but I think it’s important to show technical stuff, because that brings our sport more and more forward. Normally I skate more simple tricks with only one or two “high level tricks” in one line. My favourite tricks right now are wheeling stuff and spins. At the beginning I want to do more sitting tricks, but after one year I started to enjoy wheeling tricks more and more. ?
I hate to hit cones, so in the future I want to skate the difficult tricks more save. I also have to work on my sitting tricks, because they look kind of silly right now *laugh*. Right now I’m involved in the organisation for our event in Mönchengladbach on February 2009; I hope we can make it a good success, like last year. No need to say that everybody is invited. ?. 3. besides ¤ Do you have other passions? No special things… watching movies, going out with friends, read a book, surf the internet, listen to music or just relaxing… even the typical boring stuff ? ¤ What do you get out of these different centers of interest? Do you partition them or do you re-use the capacities you acquired in other passions? Puh, that’s a difficult question, I never really thought about it ? I think the skating part helped me to handle other things in my life better, and find a better balance for myself, but normally I prefer to separate my interests.
Tanks to the guys
from 4wheelfreestyle the guys from Team Seba, the apache? , Seba,
Dete and everybody else who support our sport ? and greetings from
Germany to everybody who read this *laugh*. August 2008 |
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Freestyle
Slalom Results :
1.
Bao Hui
3.
Gao Lin Ta
1. I.Cheremetieff
2. R. Op't Veld
3. T.Ferrari 
2.
N.Grigg
1.
M.Igaev
1S.Komissarzhevskaya
1.A.Almazan
N.Asawatanapudiskul
4.
D.Ungureanu
1.
Yu Jin Sung
4.
J.Stanning
1.
L.Wardzinska
3.
V.Denissen
4.
J.Lacivita
