Rolling Academy Pune Get’s Concrete Half Pipe
Dancing & Skating A Story from Nepal
Milan Skates Thailand Nepal Skate Scene Grows
Go Skate Day 2k16 Pune Celebrates With awesome Vibes
Contents Go Skate Day – Pune 2k16
PG 4
Milan Skates Thailand
PG 12
Pune’s Concrete Half Pipe
PG 22
Dancing & Skating
PG 30
Xtreme Nationals 2016
PG 36
Reviews
PG 41
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Editors Note Stoked to pull out the third edition of the mag. It has indeed taken a long time to get things together. The events and activities observed a slow due to the monsoon season, but a lot of exciting things have happened meanwhile. We have pulled stories from distant places as well. The Skate scene is growing very rapidly.
A lot more to come! Yours Skate A Way Mag Team‌! Cover Photo: Nagesh Wagh Skater: Shubham Surana Location: Rolling Academy, Pune Contributing Editors & Photographers Samip Jung Khadka, Milan, Gautham Kamath, XSAI, Whiteline Skateboard Thailand, Saurabh Jain, AFFYGroup Films, Tevaprapas, Siddhant Kaushik, Madhav Babar, XSAI, Himanshu Shah. This magazine is intended for free distribution and is only available through our web portal. Email us for more details.
Feel free to contribute! skateawaymag@mail.com
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Go Skateboarding Day Pune – 2k16
Street Half-Pipe Park Longboarding Words: Saurabh Jain // Photos: Nagesh Wagh, Himanshu Shah
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The 21st of June is observed worldwide as a skateboarding day. Known popularly as the GSD i.e. Go-Skate-Day, the Pune edition of it was celebrated with full enthusiasm by the local community. Organized by Active 8 sports, which is Pune based national online portal to buy skateboarding and other sports equipment, the event was supported by DC, Skate-AMag, Rolling Academy and Classic Rock CafĂŠ.
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The day started quite early as the skateboarders gathered in the city and started off with some street sessions. DC had planned some awesome give away goodies. Hitesh was the first one to grab a cool DC T-Shirt from this bag and was seen flaunting it in the bus all the way to Rolling Academy, where the freshly coped concrete half pipe was waiting for the skateboarders to shred! Rolling Academy has an indoor concrete half pipe and some cool features where skateboarders can show off awesome tricks. The squad reached and immediately attacked the skate arena with full enthusiasm. Newer and newer tricks started popping out as the skaters started getting a hang of the pipe. In the
meanwhile, Kevin mastered his signature manual-on-the-circle.
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After the warming up session, all savoured the delectable Misal-
Pav breakfast, to fill themselves for the upcoming jam and competition session. Zhen and Harshdeep took over the role of hosting this session as they cheered the skateboarders to come up with creative tricks. Active 8 sports and Rolling Academy also
dropped in goodies for the fresh set of skateboarders in town. A lot of new tricks were seen from beginner skateboarders as they were charged and pushed their limits to bring out new stuff out. With the energetic atmosphere, some boarders also learned to drop in on a half-pipe. Arhant styled the half pipe on his inline skates. Rohan Gawade, the only BMX rider from Pune, showed off his skills by doing wall taps and fly outs on the half pipe. Kevin completed his manual on the 25ft circle and set the crowd in awe. Shubham and Karthik set the place on fire with their kickflips and ollies.
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The radness was taken to next level by Navin
who took
everyone on the smooth downhill tarmac to try a hand at downhill skateboarding. With everyone liking the idea, it was decided to have a short downhill race. Everyone rushed to the start line and was charged to rush down with all the speed they
could. With great uncertainty, as everyone was overtaking each other, Karthik pushed himself with super speed to victory. He eventually took longer to come back to the venue! Navin showed some never before seen in Pune slides on his downhill boarding
runs.
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All this action made everyone hungry, for food and for the next session at Classic Rock CafĂŠ as well. With a brief lunch stop on the way to CRC, the skateboarders
were excited to shred the Fresh Park setup put up by Active 8 sports at the cafĂŠ. A rad group of rappers and hip hoppers, by the names of P2R and Pune Hip Hop Renaissance were waiting to put up a rad jam session along with the skateboarders. The DJ from CRC had put awesome music to charge the hip hoppers. Mansi, the super girl from Pune, amazed everyone with her beatboxing skills. With their interesting Rap battle, Ajay and his crew took everyone to a typical American street scene.
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A game of skates was declared between Shubham, Karthik and Harshit, where everyone was to do a trick and challenge the others to replicate it. With Harshit getting out after a few tricks, the competition was fierce between Shubham and Karthik. Each was earning a DONKEY letter with every trick, it was a tough fight for glory. It was an ideal betting situation when
both had reached DONKE and the first one to miss a trick would be the loser. For almost 4 tricks was the competition neck to neck, until eventually Shubham pulled out a trick which Karthik couldn’t complete, giving the crown to Shubham. His hard work earned him a fresh board.
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After all the sessions and a tiring day, everyone chilled out watching the inspiring Girls Skate India Tour movie in the awesome ambience of Classic Rock CafĂŠ. All in all, it was an awesome show put together by everyone to celebrate the GSD 2016-Pune edition. The
day saw maximum number of skateboarders in Pune coming
together.
Goodies
like
T-Shirts,
boards,
wheels, bearings, trucks and caps were seen flying
in the air. Not only the skateboarders, but also the organizers enjoyed the event a lot.
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Milan Skates
Thailand
Words: Samip Jung Khadka Photos: Tevaprapas (wiki) // Whiteline Skateboard Thailand
Milan Shah Thakuri, the rising star of Nepal skateboarding recently returned from his first trip to Thailand. A plan that was long in the making and the culmination of his efforts in the Nepal scene as well as his success in the Indian skate competition. Milan is the first skateboarder to go there specifically with the mission to represent the local scene and his journey is a landmark for Nepal skateboarding. His trip was sponsored by Haul Apparel and AI Whiteline Skateboards. He spent a month in Thailand and this is his story, as told by him.
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As told by Milan Shah Thakuri, Translated by Samip Jung Khadka …
I started my trip on June 13th on Nepal Airline, nervous and excited to go to Bangkok for the very first time. Every time I have flown on Nepal Airlines it’s a crazy experience; the moment it gains some height the shaking starts, and after a few minutes that clam soothing voice comes over the speakers and says “everything is going to be all right, don’t worry about the airplane, just sit back and relax”. That is how all my trips have started since I started skating and going abroad for tours and comps.
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It was three hours to fly to Bangkok, and AK, my sponsor had told me to go to gate four after immigration. I met up with AK and his wife Natti and headed out of the airport. I was so stoked to see all the huge buildings in the skyline; I was just thinking like “so this is Bangkok� and trying to take everything in. When I got into the city the first thing I saw was a Ferrari, I was pretty excited because all the things I heard about Bangkok were immediately apparent. Then I went into a store called 7-11, apparently this store is everywhere in Bangkok, like 3 or 4 of them in every street and it's open 24-7. Coming from Nepal, even these little things made me feel like I had come into a totally different world. One really crazy experience was getting out of the car onto the street for the first time. It was so insanely hot; the heat was coming from the ground, the side, the top. It felt like I was like a nan bread in the tandoor oven. We went straight to the skate park at Hua Mark. I literally thought I was in heaven. I felt like I was watching street league live. They had all the obstacles, the park was covered and the floor was so smooth and slippery. I couldn’t even push on it in the beginning. I tried my best but I was not used to such surfaces. In Nepal, everywhere we go to skate is a little bit rough; there isn't such a smooth surface anywhere. It took me almost a week at that park to get used to that surface but once I got used to, it was amazing. I gave full power to the first session because I was so excited to finally skate a proper skate park and kept going till I could not physically skate anymore.
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At the skate park I met Rainny. He is the owner of LTC skate shop and is also a member of the AI Whiteline team. I was going to be staying at his house while I was in Bangkok. His house was close to the skate park and was very nice and comfortable. I spent the whole of the first night in Bangkok with Rainny, looking at local skate footage that he had on his computer and listening to his stories and accolades about the Thai skate scene. I wanted to sleep but I also wanted to have fun so we got a few beers, had a few sandwiches and hung out all night. It was raining a lot in Bangkok at the time, and one day half the skate park was knee deep in water. There were so many people skating there that I really couldn’t skate, and so I went around and had some fun. But I have to say that every time I got to skate at the park I felt like I was in some kind of a skate heaven. I can only imagine where my proficiency would be if I had started my skating at a spot like that. On the 3rd day in Bangkok, I met up with Shawn Ward. He’s a legend in the Nepali skate scene because he was there when we first started having skate comps, made the first go skateboarding day and he also collected many donations decks from Bangkok and sent it over. Many of the best skaters in the country have been inspired by him and their first decks were ones that he sent from Thailand. I asked him to teach me some tricks on the down rail and he gave me so much time and was very helpful. But I couldn’t just skate one obstacle; I was like a kid in a candy shop. I couldn’t decide what I wanted to skate and wanted to get on each and every one.
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I skated on the down rail, the ledge, the stairs, the A frame, the ramp, the flat. I tried to get as many as possible and I went so hard. After the 5th day my whole body was destroyed. I had pains in places I didn’t know existed. I was trying to do a board slide on the down rail, and did it perfectly like 2-3 times, then when I tried to film the line I was totally wiped out and fell on the rail on my back and my arm hooked around the rail and I slowly slid down, like in comedy movies. That really truly hurt and I couldn’t move my arm afterwards; I thought it was broken. The pain started to get less though, and I got back on the skateboard and skated for a few more hours. It was the best. At the end of the trip though, after 30 days in Bangkok, I realized that I was really getting injured a lot and it was mostly because I was also drinking beer a lot and skating drunk. Maybe it caused the wipeouts, or maybe it helped deal with the pain, it’s not really important. The skate culture in Bangkok is very relaxed, everyone comes to the park with a few beers and skates and drinks. It was really fun to be a part of it and see a different kind of scene.
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One of the best experiences was to go to this new park that they were building there. I was able to be part of the crew and help them out for a day. I met people that are really into the skateboarding lifestyle and really believe in the DIY (do it yourself) philosophy. That was really inspirational for me. That day was also Go Skateboarding Day. I went to see the competition and had a few beers, a few sandwiches and saw all the insane skating that went down there. There are so many skaters in Thailand, and the level of skateboarding there is so high. I was really impressed by their style, they look so steezy when they start and land tricks. I saw that there are guys there that are skating for a year that are much better than me, and I have been skating for three years now. They get to skate in such a good environment, they can skate ledges and rails. Everyone in Nepal skates street, but it’s all flat ground, because we don’t have the proper facilities. After my trip, I am fully committed to bring all the DIY obstacles we have together and build more so we can improve our skateboarding, the best that we can with what we have got. The biggest highlight of my journey in Thailand was the trip to Buriram in Isarn, north eastern Thailand. We took two cars and drove all the way up there. We went to take part in the regional skateboarding championship. I competed in the competition as an amateur. Everyone in that comp was so good; their tricks were so much on point. They had a best trick competition and a Game of Skate. I had no chance in the best trick competition; the other participants were doing insane combo tricks off obstacles that I had skated for the first time just a week before. The game of skate though was another story.
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I was scoping out my competition before and I saw that they had such awesome tricks on lock, their starting tricks were switch 360 flips and switch inward heels. I was a little nervous but then I remembered what AK had told me when I went for the Juggad competition in India. He told me to play with my mind, to watch and learn from my opponent and have a strategy on how to defeat him. I looked at their game and saw that all of them were trying really hard tricks and my only chance would be to take the lead and hold on to it. In the first game, my opponent won the lead in the beginning and killed it for a few rounds. My opponent lost the lead because he was trying to do a switch heel. I countered with a fakie big spin and saw he couldn’t do it. I felt like I had found his weakness and kept doing fakie tricks. When we started I had S.K.A already and with fakie tricks I brought him level. Then he did a full cab, I landed it in defence. Then I did a 360 ollie and he couldn’t do it. So he was SKAT, but then he countered with a switch flip which I didn’t land, so we were level again. It was pretty tense. He then tried to end it with a nollie frontside flip but luckily he didn’t land it. So the ball was in my court, and I thought, this is the final in Thailand, this is my chance to shine, go big or go home. So I went for a Fakie bigger flip and landed it and he couldn’t do it. I won the next 3 games as well, it wasn't easy but I won. So then all of a sudden I was in the finals. I made it to the final of the GOS and I was up against a local who, as it turns out, actually was also the guy who I had beat out for a spot on the Whiteline team. They made a huge crowd and everyone was watching us skate. It seemed like the same as all those videos I watched of GOS on YouTube from around the world. It was going really good, I landed switch heel, and I tried fakie bigger heel but I couldn’t land it because the floor was so slippery. I felt, I just didn’t have the experience on a floor like that to land the trick. He tried switch flip, but couldn’t land it. So I took it back to basics and hit him with a fakie big spin and to my surprise he couldn’t do it. And then the rest of the game was in the bag, looks like the skaters there just don’t do fakie. I ended the game with a nollie 360 shuvit and became the regional champ for north eastern Thailand. It is the most random but also the most fulfilling win for me so far.
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The final thing that I want to talk about is the comp that we did as a part of Skate n’ Donate Nepal. Me and Shawn went down to the park with a bunch of 20 Baht notes. We had T-shirts. It was 20, 40 and 60 Baht. 20 Baht for normal tricks, 40 Baht for variation tricks, 60 Baht for hardcore tricks and if you do the tricks we call out then you can get a Skate Nepal Skate tee and 60 Bhat. In the beginning people were not so interested, but after 1 guy started to skate we had a wave of people just rolling up to the A frame and it turned into quite an event. I was really happy to be there representing Nepal and giving back to the Thai community for all their help over the last 3 years. I was MC’ing the event, drinking beers, making friends and getting my mind blown by all the crazy tricks that they were doing. When I was coming back, the skaters in Thailand that I met had collected over 50 used decks for me to bring back. I wish I could’ve brought them all but the weight limit on the plane meant that I just chose about 15 of the best decks in the pile and got them back home. I want to use these decks to motivate kids who skate really good and in comps that I am planning to have soon. My main focus after this trip is to create an environment in Nepal that will help us up our skating game. I want to build rails, A frames, kickers, ledges and put them all in one spot, create a DIY skate park. We can’t skate the street spots so well here because they are not built properly to begin with and get destroyed fast. That also creates problems with the community, so instead, we are going to make our own obstacles, and slowly build a skate park around us from whatever we can find. Thailand showed me what skating in Asia can be like if there are proper places for people to practice and improve. I want my crew, my friends and all the new upcoming skaters to be able to go to Bangkok and fully enjoy their facilities and not face the stupid little struggles that I had to deal with. The next step is to have a huge event in Nepal, and build all the DIY obstacles that we possibly can. I am going to make it happen!!!!
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Milan is a talented skater. Even with the limited resources that are available in Nepal, he’s managed to show that the most important thing in skateboarding is to be driven and be passionate. His trip to Bangkok is the next step on the ladder in his skate journey that’s definitely taking him to amazing new heights. The best thing about him is that he realized early, since his first trip to India, that the only limit that matters is the one that he places on himself. Perhaps his most admirable quality is his determination to not only improve himself but to improve the scene for all his fellow Nepali skaters as well. He is currently planning a twomonth long series of competitions which will culminate in a huge skateboarding and street culture event in October. Keep an eye out for this kid, at the rate he’s going, he is going to be the one to watch out of the entire South-Asian scene.
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Exclusive Story
Words: Saurabh Jain // Photo: Nagesh Wagh & Himanshu Shah
Pune’s First
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Concrete Half Pipe
Pune has been the fastest growing city in India in terms of infrastructure development. It is also the city with most number of two wheelers and a huge fleet of four wheelers. But somewhere in this rush of development and traffic, a major missing was felt by the bunch of people who love to live differently; who make their own rules; the ones who push a plank; fly in the air; attract eyes and create awesome vibes. Yes, the SKATEBOARDERS!
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Alternative sports are taking up fast in places across India and Pune is no exception. To promote these sports and support the local athletes, Rolling Academy, an adventure and extreme sports destination in Pune, took the initiative to build a concrete skate park. Nick from BRGTN happily jumped in to conceive the design and offer his expertise in the execution of the project.
Rolling Academy offers a huge space to make a mega skate arena – An indoor street style park and an outdoor skate bowl. To start off, it was decided to build the park in a phased manner, the first being a 15 feet wide concrete half pipe! The phases were planned such that the elements of the park can be successively merged.
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An awesome team of people from BRGTN, Rolling Academy and Skateboarders from Pune came together to bring the half pipe to life. Overcoming the hurdles of getting the right equipment at the right time to work with, the work of making the half pipe started by cutting the ply in the accurate shape for shuttering. The master of wood work Filip (local name Dilip), who is also an avid Skateboarder from Germany, showed his mastery when he cut the transition of the half pipe with outstanding perfection. A whole bunch of skateboarders from Pune jumped in to pour the concrete and shape it up. It was a herculean task to fill up the huge volume with rocks, bricks and concrete.
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Hitesh, Harshdeep, Shirin, Shubham, Karthik put in loads of efforts to fill up the concrete and bring it to the level of giving a perfect final touch. Clemence, who is a Skateboarder from France, also took the opportunity to learn the mastery of shaping under the guidance of Nick, who is a UK based skatepark builder. The lenses of Nagesh from Pune and Gautham from Bangalore captured the awesome fun and hard work put into making the half pipe.
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The half pipe features transitions of 6ft radius. It is 15ft wide and 20ft in length, topped with black granite coping. The insides are stuffed with a mixture of stones and concrete blocks blended with concrete, to give a solid base to the half pipe. The top surface has been made of a mixture of cement and sand, which has given it a super smooth surface.
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The width of the half pipe allows 2 to 3 Skaters to skate at the same time. It is also a super width to grind and perform tricks requiring space. The guys with two wheels can do lots of stuff on the pipe. The half pipe also hosts a small wall and pillars, which make its use more versatile and gnarly tricks can be performed using these elements. A small tree stands just next to the halfpipe, which fills it with life. The surrounding is filled with greenery; green being the favourite colour of most boarders usually! A graffiti quoting ‘Our Limits are Extreme’ always inspires to push the skaters to their limits and come out with awesome tricks.
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Being indoors, the half pipe is skate able in all seasons. Rolling Academy is very close to nature and provides for the best place to skate in the region. With its raw and natural ambience, the half pipe is also an awesome spot to conduct skate meets, jam sessions and competitions. The next upcoming feature will be an indoor bowl! It will be a big 22ft bowl and stand 5ft high. And, it will be merged to the half pipe through a teardrop transition! More to come!!
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Skater’s Bio Dancing & Skating – A Story from Nepal Words/Photos: Samip Jung Khadka
One of the biggest things to happen in the skateboarding scene in Nepal recently was the victory of the Strukpop Crew in the KPop World Festival in early July. Strukpop’s Facebook likes jumped from a few hundred to a couple of thousand and everyone was losing their minds over it (change from passive to active). In the monsoon months, the rains kill skateboarding in Nepal, and events and sessions are few and far in between and the roads are way too muddy to even roll on. Suresh Moktan (known to his friends as cheemsay) and Santosh Shah Thakuri, members of Cryptic Skate Crew, heard about the K-Pop World festival happening in Nepal. Both avid skateboarders and just as avid dancers they got a crew together in a few weeks and started practicing. They auditioned for the group cover dance event and won the whole shebang, becoming the best K-Pop dance crew in Nepal overnight.
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We caught up with Suresh Moktan and Santosh Thakuri of Strukpop crew at their dance studio practicing for their next performance. We sat down to hear their story and find out how two skaters shot to K-Pop fame in Nepal and what was the journey that led them here and where they are headed now.
Suresh Moktan AKA Cheemsay Age: 22 Occupation: Student Crews: Strukpop, Cryptic Crew Time Dancing: 2 Years Time Skating: 3 Years Stance: Goofy Best Trick on Lock: Hardflip Sex-change Santosh Shah Thakuri Age: 18 Occupation: Student Crews: Strukpop, Cryptic Crew Time Dancing: 1 Year Time Skating: 2 Years Stance: Goofy Best Trick on Lock: Nollie Late Flip
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SAWmag: Hey guys, How's it going? Lets start off with the most obvious question. How did you guys find out about the K-Pop world festival? What led to from the curb to the stage? Cheemsay: There had been a K-Pop Contest in Nepal in 2015, it was marketed pretty much everywhere in Kathmandu. I was just getting into K-Pop back then and thought why not, and participated as a solo dancer. I won the contest, and got to go to India for an even bigger regional comp. When I was there I realized that the solo dancing was actually more of a side show in K-Pop cover scene. It was all about the group dance. When I came back to Nepal, I always had it in the back of my mind to form a group. So when I heard that the K-Pop World Festival would be happening in Nepal, I just jumped at the opportunity. SAWmag: Who organizes these comps?
Cheemsay: These comps are organized by the Korean Embassy and KBS World, their national TV channel. SAWmag: Cool, so you already had some people in mind for the crew? How did you manage to get everything together in such a short time? Cheemsay: I knew some people who were interested to dance. I had seen them perform at a few events at schools and small functions. I also knew Santosh. We skate at the same spots. He told me that there were people around his area who were down to form a group to enter the comp. We called them up and had a few practices to see how well we worked together. We picked up some members from them and to fill in the rest of the roster, we had an online dance battle on Facebook. We saw that format work with skateboarding before with the Skate for Valentines online comps. We got a really great response and finalized three people, which we then tapered down to two final members. The crew was formed and we started practice right away. Santosh: And then we won.
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SAWmag: The other finalist team in the comp, they had some of the girl’s skaters in that crew. Is there a lot of overlap between the two scenes?
Santosh: Not really, I think it was a coincidence. But if you look at it generally, most of the skaters in the scene at some point used to be into dancing. When they stopped dancing they took up skating. SAWmag: Is that an easy transition from dancing to skateboarding? Santosh: It was such an easy transition for me. We used to breakdance before. It was our first hobby. We saw people breaking and just learned on the fly from the internet and from each other. When we were breaking there was no one to tell us about comps, events and there was no real communication or unity in the scene. One day we heard about a break dancing competition happening in Kathmandu. When we went there we saw the level of dance in the showcase and it was kind of discouraging. They were at such a high level and we felt like there wasn’t really any opportunity for us to progress. Also around the same time Chemsay (Suresh) got sick, and the other older people in the crew had to focus on their jobs so the hype totally died. All of a sudden, one day, Chemsay showed up with a skateboard. He was the one who introduced it to the whole crew on this side of Kathmandu. We were all pretty excited about something new and cool to do. Suresh: Skateboarding had just arrived in Nepal at the time. We went like we wanted to do something fun and energetic. It could have been anything. Just move ahead with the times and see what opportunities it brings. Santosh: Ya, we didn’t want to be just stuck doing nothing. We thought we have to take chances and try out new things.
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SAWmag: What are the main differences and similarities between the two scenes? Suresh: It's so different. I don’t think K-Pop people would enjoy skateboarding events or comps. Santosh: It depends on your point of view. Me and Chemsay, we know about both K-Pop and skating. We would enjoy either. But there are a lot of people in the scenes that only know about one thing. They know a lot about it but it kind of limits them. A big similarity I think is that, like in the skate scene, everyone in the dance scene is very friendly and understanding. A big difference is that that when we skate we do tricks for ourselves, and dance is not the same. SAWmag: What do you mean? Suresh: It is easy to copy dance and replicate it, but I think skating takes way more effort. We have to put in so much time and energy to get tricks down. It's more fun when you finally land that trick and roll away as well. If you gave the same effort and energy in dancing may be you would be at a different level but you need guidance and teachers. Skateboarding is only limited by yourself and your ability.
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Indian Extreme Nationals Words: Siddhant Kaushik (XSAI) // Photos: AFFYGroup Films
This awesome weekend saw a collaboration of connoisseurs of the field of Extreme Sports in India, XSAI, Casio and DC, in the creation of the first Indian Extreme Nationals. This high octane event saw athletes participate from all over the country and was presided by a panel of professional athletes headed by Warren Stuart, the Vice- president of the Hong Kong Federation of Extreme Sports and also the head judge of the Asian Extreme Sports Federation.
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Extreme sports in India have had a slow growth curve due to the lack of enough platforms that would make the sport lucrative for the youth to participate in. Other factors include a scarcity of ramps and arenas for practice and the lack of much needed education and training for the sport. This collaboration of XSAI, the Extreme Sports association of India with Casio and DC was an answer to all the questions that Indian athletes have raised for over a decade. It offered a ramp of international standards, athletes who practice and train, international judges and a platform that would give an athlete the motivation to work for recognition. Casio with an open heart provided for the creation of the event and also honoured the best athletes with GShock watches and also helped spread the word on digital media for a huge bump in the participation of athletes and also in riling up enthusiasts for the event.
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XSAI created numerous videos, used their database of athletes for promotional purposes on digital media and also created an open to all free registration portal for all athletes who wished to participate. XSAI also created an alluring on-ground presence that would incite bystanders to be a part of the event.
DC with immense generosity gave all winners gift vouchers of lucrative values that enticed athletes to perform better while also creating an atmosphere of high voltage excitement. Ocean provided with their vitamin water for the energetic upkeep of all the athletes so that their performance never falters.
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Numerous winning athletes came up in this celebration of sports in various categories with applaudable performances; namely: Skateboarding Park:
BMX Park:
Gold- Nikhil Shelatkar Silver- Kadir Bronze- Kevin
Gold- Sanjay Rajpurohit Silver- Dhroov Rajpal Bronze- Nikhil Dhon
Skateboarding Juniors
BMX Flatland:
Gold- Devappa Silver: Arjoon Rao Bronze- Shubham
Gold- Yusuf Shaik Silver- Anul Pale Bronze- Pravin Habib
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It was the first time that so many athletes had come under a similar banner and the atmosphere was one of exuberance and happiness. Hopefully, future instalments of the event will be even better. It is such generosity that a sport in its infancy needs to create a niche for itself in the ever changing scenario of India. With the Indian Extreme Nationals, the market is already a buzz with energy for more and this buzz needs only the support of such great brands, associations and fans to reach a fever pitched crescendo. Extreme sports have already gained much influence with such and in the near future, these collaborations are sure to make extreme sports a household name and a common parallel sport.
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REVIEW
QUIKSILVER CRUISER BOARD
• Firstly, love the Fishtail shape of the deck . • The deck is made of 100% Canadian Maple wood and rocks some classic artwork with glossy finish . • With the mellow concave and tweaked tail it makes it easier to zip through corners & narrow passes. This feature is not found often in the cruiser board . • The 9 inch wide and 32 inch long deck gives enough legroom to cruise comfortably . • The wheels that are 68mm are quite grippy and big. Cruising on rough surfaces are super smooth with these wheels. • The trucks that come with the setup are inverted and are very responsive, making it easier to commute in traffic . • Overall it’s a very good commuter , easy to carry and an eco friendly way to travel short distances in cities. Words: Gautham Kamath
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REVIEW
DC ARGOSY HIGH-TOP Words: Gautham Kamath • • • • • • •
• • •
This review was done over a course of 2 weeks and gathered about 20 hours of skating in the process. To begin with it’s a very sturdy shoe, takes time to break-in . Even after the break-in point, the Argosy ( High-top ) will still have a sturdy feel without getting all floppy due to their thick leather heel counter. Being a sturdy shoe with cup soles its still fits to the size . Toe side of the shoe is narrow cup soles which makes flicking the board easier . Impact G technology is really good , helps a lot in landing high impact tricks . The Impact G, along with it’s cup sole technology will keep your feet protected. Suede - It’s Super Suede and it hardly rips and is one of the stronger suede’s used in skateboarding shoes today. The outsole may seem a little thick but once you break-in, the pill pattern tread & the board feel is more than accommodating and it grips well too . I personally prefer to skate in low-tops but I recommend beginners to go for the high-tops, it saves you from ankle injuries . Overall with all the technologies like Impact G , Cup soles and DC Super Suede there is no question about durability . “ this shoe lasts long ”.
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