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Summer is coming to an end and there’s only two stops left on the United Skim Tour. This past weekend was the final stop on the east coast, taking place in Vilano Beach, Florida. This was a huge stop for everyone focused on the tour because all the scores throughout the top ten are in reaching distance. Everyone is as hungry as can be and I believe the title is going to come down to the final stop on the tour once again. Similar to Delaware and North Carolina, were dealing with small wave conditions and multi trick combos. It was interesting to see how certain waves were judged higher and lower against each other because at the end of the day, no matter what your opinion is on a trick or wave, the overall decision is from the judges.
I feel a lot of the riders that dedicate themselves to being a part of the whole tour would agree that they would rather be on bigger sized waves, like Cabo and Brazil. However,
Vilano really shows the otherside of skimming and the technicality that an overall strong skimmer should have.
It’s more of a skate contest, where you make the best out of the conditions you’re given. And you see riders pulling off tricks you wouldn’t see on a regular basis.
Everyone on the team presented a great showing at this contest.
Morgan Just had his best finish of the tour so far, skimming his way to Third place.
He was on his game throughout the whole event and brought out a large variety of different tricks. He had a very tough battle with the winner of the contest Sam Stinnet in his semi final. Even though he may not of made his heat against Sam, he put on a great show and made it one of the most memorable heats of the year. East coast rider Troy Rhoten ended up getting one of his better finishes of the year and his performance really showed. He has the east coast conditions on lock and completed a lot of crucial airs and shuvit combos. Teddy Vlasis made it through a couple of very tough heats and you could see that he really wanted to perform at his best in this event. He was pulling off very challenging 3 shuvs before he would hit the wave and tried to create the biggest score he could in the smaller wave conditions. This was probably one of my most difficult events of the year and I was really happy to make it through a couple of rounds. At the beginning of my heats I would get caught up thinking “there’s no way I have the tricks to beat the riders I was up against.”
But I was grateful I found a couple of the better waves in the heat and make the best of it.
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I had an especially great time outside of the event visiting the city of St. Augustine.
St. Augustine is one of the oldest if not the oldest towns in the US.
We had a couple days of downtime to explore and came across a lot of fun sites. For instance, Ponce De Leon’s “Fountain of Youth” and the Castillo de San Marcos, a National Monument of Florida. It was crazy to imagine all the history that happened throughout that town. It reminded me somewhat of a real life Pirates of the Caribbean. I really cherish moments like these on our trips, because it displays how unique all the different stops we attend are. Out of all the different things we did on the trip,
I had the best time being a part of the Super Hero/Villain skim session at the end of the contest.
It reminded me why I skim and why I enjoy skimming. The groms were so stoked to see all of us dressed up and doing what we love, and I was glad I could be a part of that group. It reminded me of how fired up I would get when I used to watch old videos of guys like Paulo Prietto and James Lovett dressing up.
It made me recognize that the most important part of all these events is not about winning, but having the best time.
And I feel I did just that. The joy and happiness that came out of those groms made every moment worth it.
– Words by Johnny Salta – Pictures by Fabiana Badie & Johnny Salta
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