As the name speaks for itself, we hosted the second STEP IN THE ARENA skateboard contest at the Skatehalle Innsbruck, Saturday 27th of April. We’re pretty excited for several reasons …
First, we’re hyped about the fact that one of the last original skate shoe brands supports our event. For those who don’t know, LAKAI was founded in 1999 by Mike Carroll and Rick Howard. If you don’t know those skateboard legends, do research on Google and you’ll get the background. Lakai is compared to most of the other brands just skateboarding, not football, not tennis, and not sneaker street style; it’s pure and raw skateboarding. That’s why we’re hyped.
Secondly, in the whole history of go-shred, we never had the opportunity to run a skateboard event with €1000 prize money. We’re blessed to have the opportunity to give back something to those who are investing a lot of time and money in skateboarding and could not achieve the status to make a living with skateboarding. So, what go-shred is trying to compensate a little bit this investment from those shredders, who work hard and spend all their resources in skateboarding.
Thirdly, we had at least two never been done during our contest. There were at least two transfers, which nobody ever saw before. One by Ado and one by Sebi. Check the review clips and our Instagram feed and you will see what it looks like.
But now back to the main facts:
Saturday, 27th of March in the morning, we pulled up our installation and at 12:00 o’clock the first people showed up to register for the contest. In the end, there were 41 competitors in 3 categories: Women, unsponsored, and sponsored riders. At 13:30 we started the contest with the unsponsored and the women category. And for those who don’t know the STEP IN THE ARENA format, it’s a jam session format in combination with a best trick session. If you can’t get it, do yourself a favor and come by to one of our next sessions. After the unsponsored category, we continued with the sponsored riders. Mainly underreported, we’re always pleased to welcome the local and European champion Santino Exenberger. With his effortless style and his huge bag of tricks it’s always entertaining to watch him shredding. For sure, there were more locals on stage. In the starter field, we had go-shred FAMily Fabian Trojer, Homie Chris Havaux, and from Vienna, we saw the powerhouse and Lakai FLOW TEAM member Sebi Fox, who did one of the NBDs. Not to forget Ado Selimi, who did the other NBD. There were more highlights during all the day, but it would take too much time to write it all down.
That’s why I recommend, watch all the recap reels on our Instagram account and check out the website, where we spread more clips and pics from the STEP IN THE ARENA contest.
All in all, it was another piece of skateboard history in Innsbruck and we’re glad to have real support from real skateboard enthusiasts and that we can go our way and find our path to represent skateboarding as we want. Thank you to all our supporters for making it happen: Skatehalle Innsbruck, Ride In Pleasure Skateboard, Xdouble, Autohaus Dosenberger, Volcom, Lakai Limited Footwear and to all those who follow their passion.
