With the majority of France focused on the days football, there was a small corner of the French capital outside of the Palais de Tokyo, where all thoughts were tuned into skating and final day of the Nike SB Paris AM
After a morning of rain, blazing sunshine bathed the ‘pop-up’ park designed to test the adaptability of the skaters and modeled in part to represent 20 districts of the city.
With yesterday’s qualifiers looking as though the set up was perhaps a little too challenging, skaters in semi finals and finals took it apart as though it was the local spot, yet again demonstrating that the level of amateur skating in the Nike SB Euro Series has rocketed since it was first introduced 3 years ago.
A truly international pack of 30 riders came into the Semi Finals and displayed a wild variety of styles and approaches to park from the sublime - Kai Hillebrand’s demonstration of casual style with a back tail pretzel out over the bank to bank -
to the down right ridiculous - Jacopo Carozzi 50-50 on the rail to a one of a kind double foot flip out.
The top 3 from the Paris AM have all emerged in just the last 2 years and are becoming familiar faces one the international scene. 3rd Egor Kaldikov form St. Petersburg, Russia, mixed technical ability with consistency - Krooked grind nollie flip out and Front blunts on the rail every time. 2nd place Vincent Milou stepped up his game in the final run – flipping into all his tricks on the rail and Ollie up to nose grind up and over the bank to bank wall ride. But taking the win right off the back of his 1st place in the London AM was Aurelien Giraud who defies belief with his power and effortless consistency when it counts – bigger flip front board to fakie, 270 lipslide 270 out, 360 flip lipslide.
The next and final stop in the Nike SB European Series lands in Germany for the Berlin Open where some of the best pros from Europe and beyond gather at the Nike SB Shelter park to compete for a share of the €20,000 prize purse. 8th – 10th July
For more information Nike SB European Series - nike.com/euroseries
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