Brazil’s Rayssa Leal, Portugal’s Gustavo Ribeiro Win SLS Championship Tour Salt Lake City Stop With New Format
Rayssa Leal from Brazil (left) celebrates her victory at the SLS Championship Tour Salt Lake City … [+]
Lucas Bruton
At a brand new skate park, inaugurated by Tony Hawk and Vans on Friday, the world’s best street skateboarders competed at the first stop of the Street League Skateboarding (SLS) Championship Tour in Salt Lake City this weekend.
The first of three Championship Tour stops this season – the next two are slated for Miami and Jacksonville – SLS celebrated the return of fans to the stands, with many of its skaters fresh from the Tokyo Olympics, where no spectators were in attendance .
The Salt Lake City event, organized by the Utah Sports Commission and held at the Utah State Fair Park, was a free, first come, first served event.
This season marked the return of SLS’s limited roster with a pre-season invitational qualifier at Paul “P-Rod” Rodriguez’s Primitive Skatepark.
After the preliminary rounds on Friday, the eight finalists of the men and women went to the new Vans Street Course to fight for the podium places. For the first time, the SLS final was presented in a new format. Each rider, men and women, had a 45-second run in the first section, or the “Line” section, followed by four best-trick attempts in the second section.
But in a new fold this year, after winning the top three of those five scores (the lowest and the highest lost), the top four riders moved into a “superfinal,” each with two additional best-trick attempts had to get its lowest recorded score, for a possible total score of 30.
Any score that starts with the number nine is rarely seen in SLS competitions, but the judges were clearly impressed with what they saw on Saturday, with some male drivers receiving several nines.
The highest score among the women was Rayssa Leals 8.5, which she earned on her last trick attempt in the superfinal – her Walk-Off Kickflip Frontside Boardslide, which sealed her victory with a final score of 21.0. She took off just ahead of the Japanese Funa Nakayama (20.7), who was the only driver in the women’s field to win two sevens. Roos Zwetsloot from the Netherlands completed the podium in third.
The Brazilian Rayssa Leal, the Japanese Funa Nakayama and the Dutch Roos Zwetsloot finished first … [+]
Lucas Bruton
“It changed everything,” said Leal, with Brazilian street legend Leticia Bufoni translating the addition of the “superfinal”. The mother of the 13-year-old helped her with the strategy.
The new format is different and tougher, said Leal – who won street skateboard silver for women at the Tokyo Olympics – because “you kind of have to win twice”.
“We’ve all helped her decide which tricks should save her,” said Bufoni. “It was definitely more difficult than the other formats.”
Nakayama, whose Japanese street skater Aori Nishimura translated, also confessed to spending a lot of time deciding which tricks to throw in the first four attempts and which to save for a potential superfinal that wasn’t guaranteed.
Neither Leal nor Bufoni had expected so many Brazilians in Salt Lake City – and there were many. More than a dozen Brazil flags fluttered in the wind as spectators cheered on their skaters in the final – Pamela Rosa joined Leal in the women while Kelvin Hoefler, Felipe Gustavo and Filipe Mota represented the country in the men.
Leal, who drives for Nike SB, said it felt like she was home.
However, Brazil failed to crack the podium in the men’s final. The Portuguese Gustavo Ribeiro relegated the Americans Nyjah Huston (27.2) and Alex Midler (25.4) to first place with a monster score of 27.6. Ribeiro got the highest score of the day with a 360 flip noseblunt, commanding a 9.4 and joining his 9.0 on his first trick and 9.2 on his third trick.
Portugal’s Gustavo Ribeiro, the American Nyjah Huston and the American Alex Midler … [+]
Lucas Bruton
Huston took two nines, an even 9.0 on his second trick and the second highest score of the day with a 9.3 on his fourth trick. His fifth trick (and final make-of-the-day), a cab flip-back lip slide, received an 8.9, and later, Huston publicly shared his confusion on social media. But the 0.4 points Ribeiro had on Huston earned him his first first SLS place.
Like Leal and Nakayama, Ribeiro thought that the superfinal would be “different and tougher”, which put more pressure on the drivers. But in the end the Cariuma driver thought it was a good idea – and it was clearly good for him.
Ribeiro sustained an injury just before the Tokyo Olympics, where he finished eighth in the men’s road final, admitting that his skating was “not his best” at the Games. The same obviously doesn’t apply to his performance in Salt Lake City.
“I’ve trained a lot and have fun with my homies, and when you train a lot, good things come,” said Ribeiro, 20. “I think today was my day and I’m so excited.”
The Street Skatepark, where the first stop of the SLS Championship Tour took place, built by Vans and … [+]
Lucas Bruton
The Vans-donated street park that was home to the SLS Salt Lake City stop will join the nearby Bowl Vans, another skate park that will remain in the Greater Salt Lake City community. Funded in a private-public model, more than 750 residents gave their feedback on the design of the course, which is designed with mirrored features in order to offer advantages for normal and goofooters alike.
The SLS Championship Tour will also be the first live event for the SkateBird Miami Skatepark, an upcoming SLS-certified street square. The 2021 SLS champions will be crowned at the Super Crown World Championship in Jacksonville on Sunday, November 14th.
Comments are closed.