articles : 2002 Asian X Games Qualifier, Kuala Lumpur
The event itself was largely unexciting, probably because of the heat. Though the level of skating was high, my fried brains can barely remember much of what happened. All I remember was the first ever 4 man crossover attempt on the vert ramp by the Japanese team in the vert doubles, which was awesome. Another Japanese surprise was the strong street performance by usually vert oriented Yasutoko brothers. They both showed flawless runs, no falls, no slip ups... all butter, it was scary. The street finals ended up being an exciting showdown between Eito Yasutoko and Australian Ian Brown. The Aussie managed to match the Japanese in consistency and tricks, but made one minor slip up, which bumped him into third. Losing out by 0.05 is a frustrating thing. Unfortunately, most of our fellow Malaysians didn't make it very far, no fear, there's always next year.
Here are the results:
Vert
- Eito Yasutoko
- Takeshi Yasutoko
- Rui Kitamura
Vert Doubles
- Eito & Takeshi Yasutoko
- Sam Fogarty & Toby Heslop
- Rui Kitamura & Hisashi Inagaki
Street
- Takeshi Yasutoko
- Ian Brown
- Eito Yasutoko
Junior Street
- CJ Wellsmore
- Nick Schofer
- Surawat Borumjkit
The thing that stuck more in my mind was the mind blowing session we had with the pros in our very own KJ Park. We managed to kidnap them from their hotels (many thanks to Naz, Yeng and Sanjit for that) for a session in KJ Park. Now THAT is what I call fun, skating side by side with your idols, ahhh.....it doesn't get any better than that. For those who didn't make it this year, make sure you keep a close eye on the kjrollers message board next year for announcements. Because most of the old farts (aka American pros) didn't skate that much, it was the surprise visit by two Slovakian rollers that made the day, those guys were pulling things never imagined (soul all the way up the midvalley fly box to 540 off).
I'm sorry to you guys who stuck by my ramblings thus far, I'm writing this 1 month after it happened, under pressure from Nazrul, so forgive me. If you want better reporting, try to make it there yourself next year, trust me, you wont regret it.
P/s - I guess I should mention that there were other sports in the x games too, stuff like skateboarding, mountain climbing yada yada....
- sukeats