Slalom Update: The highlight of the 2016 slalom racing season – the World Championships – was held in Riga, Latvia, an 800-year-old city in Europe’s Baltic region. It’s always exciting to travel to a new place for racing, and Riga did not disappoint.
These events are like a class reunion of the top racers from around the world who come to test their skills among the best. The organizing team headed by Janis Kuzmins and Lienite Skaraine did a super job coordinating a three days of racing, with dedicated announcers, excellent timing systems and live streaming web/TV coverage throughout the weekend. They wisely planned to hold the junior, teen and kids’ events simultaneously at a separate course nearby, which helped keep things manageable with the large number of racers present – 102 in all.
Friday, day one started with a two-hour bus ride into the Priekuli forest to the legendary hill found by Gints Gailitis. It was one of the most beautiful places we’ve ever raced at, with gigantic tall trees lining the single-lane giant slalom course. The course was challenging, striking a nice balance of a true GS, pushing racers to cut through big turns at speed while holding their line and keeping it clean.
Saturday and Sunday brought us back to Riga central for two days of head to head racing with large start ramps. The race course was set in Lucavsala Park in conjunction with a major music festival that brought plenty of spectators course-side. The threat of rain was looming both days, however, and we actually experienced what seemed like a mini-tornado touching down on Saturday’s hybrid race course, demolishing the scaffolding tower and sending everyone running for cover. Fortunately, some epic elimination matchups had just concluded in the women’s and men’s pro final rounds, but the masters and amateur classes had to be decided on the qualifying results.
Unfortunately, the rain was back on Sunday – cutting the tight slalom race day short again. Despite the weather, it was great to see the growing enthusiasm of racing groups from all over Europe traveling together and representing – Czech Republic, Russia, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Germany, Britain and a healthy group of local Latvians, plus the Brazilians and, of course, our American contingent.
There were many new pros, both men and women, making strides for the podium this year, and two major achievements were realized – Joe McLaren won his seventh consecutive overall men’s pro world title, and Lynn Kramer swept the pro women’s events, bringing her overall world title record to 12. As an interesting side note, after the Worlds, many of the racing entourage headed on to Stockholm, Sweden the very next weekend for the Banked Slalom World Championships at Highvalley Skateworld.
Besides the slalom specialists, even legends such as Steve Caballero showed up to compete, and the genres of vert and slalom were bridged at least a bit.
With skateboarding coming to the Olympics in 2020, slalom skateboard racing should really be recognized and considered for inclusion. Even with this Worlds now in the record books, 2016 still has some major races on the radar – namely the equally ISSA-ranked
Sk8Kings U.S. Nationals in Oceanside,
California, on October 1–2 and the
Main-status Cone Fest in Ashland,
Kentucky, on September 16–18.
Thanks to Michael Brooke of Concrete Wave Magazine!