X-Trials Connecticut - Street Photo Gallery

Check Out:  Day 1 - Flatland - Check Out:  Day 2 - Vert

Before anyone sends an e-mail on how this really isn't street let's just remind the world that the 'street' competition happens in a skatepark - not 'real' street.  Okay?  Okay!

There is little in this world that is more relaxing while you sleep then listening to raindrops patter against the side of the hous...  wait...  WAIT!  Was that rain?  Oh crap!  What time is it?  10:00AM?  Oh man, this has got to pass or there won't be a street contest going on today.

11:00AM - Still Raining
12:00 - Noon - Still Raining
1:00PM - Still Raining
2:00PM - POURING

2:01PM - We pack everything back into the van and begin the drive back home.  Though we didn't wait for the 'official' cancel of the event, there was little doubt that the contest was over.  This would mean that there is absolutely no coverage of what went down...

Except, we filmed and took pictures of practice from the day before.  That was about three hours of riding from guys that were hoping that they would be competing the next day for a shot at the X-Games.  They had broken the riders into three groups of about ten, and each group got about an hour on the course.  Most of the riders were taking it easy, just getting used to the ramps and saving their energy for the upcoming event.  A few riders were going all out and having fun with the day.

Koji Kraft - Koji loves to ride, it's that simple.  Injuries plague him simply because he has the nuts to go for tricks that you and I can't do, and his knee was bugging him this time.  But during practice he was still flowing over the spine throwing down big tailwhips with ease, and supermans over the box jump that would make TJ Lavin look twice.

Tom Haugen wasn't going all out and told me it wasn't worth my time to film him because he wasn't going to do anything...  That was right before he went up and hit five or six flawless tailwhip tailtaps.  Glad I ignored him.

Jay Miron wasn't really going for variety during practice, he was having fun.  He spent most of the time messing around on the min-sub rail, spine, mini-sub box combo that ESPN had set up.  Big tailtaps and grinds happened regularly from him, but his big trick for the practice was a super tech whiplash on the six inch board on top of the spine back in flawless.

Dave Osato was getting irked because he hadn't been able to nail the tailwhip on the sub rail.  No, that's not quite true... he hit it on the very first try and then couldn't hit it again.  That is always irritating because you already know you can do it, but then can't repeat.  Well, Dave is a determined guy, and before practice was over he had hit the tailwhip solid.

Cory Martinez was flowing through the course with lots of style.  His transfers off the wedge ramp onto the sub wedge with a big invert thrown in were beyond stylish.  Another rider was eying up a transfer from the wedge that led up to the top of the sub box to make a transfer into the sub box the next day... but no contest meant that we never got to see that transfer happen.

Oh yeah, this guy was doing backflips to manuals.  John Heaton... maybe you've heard of him.  He had a great transfer line setup and was working hard to transfer up to the top of the small sub box with a backflip manual.  About ten tries and one run in with some guy with a video camera (sorry John) is all it took before he finally hit it perfectly.  Of course, once you have one trick down, it's time to step it up.  About twenty minutes later John went up and hit the backflip to manual transfer onto and back into the small sub box then went across the park course to do a flip transfer up the twelve foot sub box.  What audience was there went nuts, Jay Miron who had just bailed on the spine was asking if the applause was for him.

So, no contest, but the best part of the contest still happened.  Practice and riding with others.  A good session, but no big run from Mirra.  There was a lot of questions from riders as to how the final spots for the X-Games would be determined.  I think for Jay it was his first ESPN event of the year so he needed it more than others if he wanted a qualifying position.  We will keep our eyes posted for how the Hoffman and ESPN crew will figure out how things will be done.