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Worlds 2011 Ottawa - Cananda In a break with tradition, the 2011 World Championships of Slalom Skateboarding began with tight slalom. Claude Regnier set a somewhat innocent-looking TS course that turned out not to be so innocent. |
 Photo: Paul Price
Emilie Gascon (front) and Lisa Farrows
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| In a break with tradition, the 2011 World Championships of Slalom Skateboarding began with tight slalom. Although the TS was originally planned to take place on Carling Avenue, a major street in Ottawa, the race was moved to Dovercourt Avenue due to the much higher cost of closing Carling Avenue for an extra day. (The hybrid slalom and giant slalom will still take place on Carling Avenue on Saturday.) Claude Regnier set a somewhat innocent-looking TS course that turned out not to be so innocent. The first half of the course was mostly straight, with most cones set at about 6 to 6.5 feet (1.8 to 2.0 meters), but then took a quick dive to the left, then right, and then left again, before ending in about 15 more mostly straight cones. Many riders had difficulty making it hrough the tricky curved sections, resulting in a lot of DQs and double DQs in both qualifying and bracketed racing. One person who didn#t seem to have much trouble was Latvia#s Janis Kuzmins, who scored a convincing victory over Colorado#s Joe McLaren in the Pro division. Although Joe had qualified #1 and had only hit one or two cones in most of his qualifying runs and early head-to-head runs, he hit an astonishing 13 cones in his first run against Janis in the finals, while Janis ran clean, leaving Janis with a 1.5-second advantage going into the second run. To score his second TS world championship (his first was in 2007), all Janis had to do was cruise and make sure he didn#t DQ. But instead he attacked the course as though he were the one who needed to make up a huge deficit. He again beat Joe to the line and again ran the course completely clean, leaving no doubt that he deserved the title of World Tight Slalom Champion. In the Women#s division, Lynn Kramer again dominated the field, earning her ninth world championship title. Canada#s Julie Boulanger, Latvia#s Lienite Skaraine and Canada#s Emilie Gascon rounded out the top four. The Masters division featured some very fast racing, rivaling some of the pro times. The tighter the course is, the more Florida#s Keith Hollien likes it. "The Machine" took a well-deserved first place over Northern California#s John Ravitch, who had advanced to the finals by knocking off the legendary HACKMAN THE GNAR, a.k.a. skate legend David Hackett, in the semis. Hackett rebounded in the consolation bracket to take third place over John Stryker from Washington. This impressive top four showed that speed, talent and fierce racing are not just for the young. ____________________________________________________________ Three new world champions were crowned in the Pro, Amatur and Masters categories in Saturday#s hybrid slalom event, while Gabe Duquet earned his second world title and the legendary Lynn Kramer added a 10th world championship title to her already amazing list of accomplishments. Race organizer Claude Regnier#s course on Ottawa#s Carling Avenue was long and fast, with a good mix of straight sections, offsets and step-overs to keep things interesting. Unfortunately, the event was interrupted by rain with just one run remaining in the second round of Pro qualifying. The resulting delay forced Claude to make the difficult decision to use the qualifying results as the final results. The racer on the starting ramp when the rain came, Karl Floitgraf, graciously agreed to accept a "DNR" for his second run to allow the results of both rounds to be counted. In the Pro division, Louis Ricard overcame a shocking first-run DQ with a sensational second run to edge Joe McLaren and earn his first world championship title. Ricard hit four cones on his second run, but his blistering raw time of 24.811 on the approximately 300-meter-long course was more than enough to overcome the total .8-second cone penalty and place him about .2 seconds ahead of McLaren. Robert Thiele ran a clean 26.345 to claim third place ahead of Adam Schwippert. In the Women#s division, Kramer earned her 10th world title with a time of 29.532 seconds. Canada#s Julie Boulanger, Latvia#s Lienite Skaraine and Canada#s Emilie Gascon repeated their placings from Friday#s tight slalom event. In the Amateur division, Lou Statman from Dallas, Texas achieved his goal of winning a world championship by beating Canada#s Pascal "Rookie" Jean and the USA#s Curt DeBartolo. From the very first race of the year, Lou had made it no secret that he was taking this race season seriously, and his training and dedication paid off. In the Masters, Brad "Jackhammer" Jackman from the northwestern U.S. state of Washington edged Florida#s Keith Hollien by less than .1 seconds and his own training partner in Washington, John Stryker, by about .3 seconds to earn his first world title. Black Leather Racing icon David Hackett placed fourth. And Gabe Duquet claimed the world title in the Junior division, leading an all-Canadian top four that included Friday#s TS champion Thomas Duplessis, Duquet#s brother Dan and Riley Schroeder. This was Duquet#s second world tile; he also won the Junior hybrid crown at Hood River, Oregon in 2009. Text: Jonathan Harms |
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