Hyde Park Battle 2013

I didn’t feel one hundred percent ready yet Natalie Ujuk (who I had slalom lessons with), encourages everyone to get involved, regardless of ability. From every experience you’ll gain something from. I agree with this approach, yet reluctantly I agreed to partake.



This is my first formal slalom competition which consisted of three events.

SPEED. It’s the fastest time to go through a set of 20 cones on one foot. Penalties were given to your final time if any of the cones were knocked.

Before the actual run we had a warm up. I couldn’t even do the whole line of cones without the crowd pressure. Therefore when it came to the actual competition I didn’t do much better. I was somewhat annoyed with myself as I had done this countless times without too much trouble.


SLALOM BATTLE. You’re in a group with four other skaters and you each have two runs of 30 seconds to show your stuff. I’m not entirely sure on the exact rules but the judges are looking for style, control, complexity and variety of tricks. Knocking cones over will knock down your score. I again didn’t do as well as I normally skate. My failsafe tricks even failed. I decided to just go for a heel wheel slalom as an attempt to keep on par with my competitors but with no luck.

To be honest though even if I skated my best that day, everyone else skating that day was just SO much better. It was inspiring to see them compete though.

(Video is above, but recording cut before the last run of the final contestant).


JUMPS. Unfortunately the rain started coming down hard so this did not go ahead.



Summary.
It was not my best day of skating. A bit of public performance is good for character building, as they say. However I usually I like to slalom in my own little bubble with my headphones plugged in. Probably the high pace techno they played didn’t help. (I prefer a bit of Hotel California to slalom to).

I must say I didn’t really enjoy the event itself but I’d hate to leave my slaloming career short lived with this negativity. At some point I’ll be back.


On a positive note I was really touched that some of my friends gave up their afternoon to support me. Also I am now an official World Ranked Inline Slalom Skater! How funny is that?


#776 Freestyle Slalom Mens (out of 979).

#531 Speed Slalom Mens (out of 859).