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Cincinnati Day One
The Action Sports World Tour Hits the Bank of Kentucky Center
By Jared Souney
Day One of the Cincinnati Action Sports World Tour stop just wrapped up as the crowd at the brand new Bank of Kentucky Center witnessed BMX Big Air Triples Prelims, Skateboard Vert Prelims, an Amateur Skate Vert competition, and a musical performance by Theory of a Deadman on the Maxell music stage.
The Am vert skaters took to the ramp first, where Atlanta’s Chris O’Reilly edged out Zach Miller and Jordan Price to take the win. These guys showed that they aren’t far off from Pro ranks, and they’re going to be giving the big dogs a run for their money very, very soon.
The action then moved over to the new BMX Big Air Triples course. This course made it’s debut last year at the Phoenix stop of the Action Sports World Tour, and the event — one of a kind and something you’ll only find on the Action Sports World Tour — gets better every event. This time around, we had a wider quarterpipe (the course consists of a huge roll-in to two box jump hits, followed by a quarterpipe), making for a much better contest over all as we saw some huge quarterpipe tricks to round out the runs. Triple tailwhips, huge flairs, front flips and 720s were commonplace on course from a stacked field including Mike Spinner, Ryan Guettler, Dennis Enarson, Austin Coleman, Anthony Napolitan, Rob Darden, Steve McCann and Koji Kraft. Ten riders move on to tomorrow nights final, but it was tailwhip master Mike Spinner who moves on in the top qualifying spot.
After an FMX demo we moved back over to the vert ramp for the Pro Skateboard Vert Prelims. Big name veterans like Pierre-Luc Gagnon, Renton Miller, and Sandro Dias battled it out (in a new format) against newcomers like Alex Perelson and Josh Stafford. The skaters were judged on ten walls (walls being sides of the ramp, so each hit is a wall) as opposed to the standard 45 second run. They got three runs, with the best run being counted, and from there five skaters move on to tomorrows final. No stranger to the top spot, PLG qualified in first followed by young gun Alex Perelson, Danny Mayer (who landed a kickflip McTwist in his run), Jean Postec and Anthony Furlong.
Rounding out the night was a thunderous performance from Theory of a Deadman over on the Maxell music stage. Northern Kentucky loves the hard rock! You won’t want to miss the action tomorrow night we’ve got Skate vert finals, BMX Big Air Triples finals and a musical performance from Kardinal Offishall.
