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Flying ten year olds, the rain, and Tony Hawk

Vans Park Series Paris 2019

This years Vans Park Series European stop took place near Paris in Chelles at the Cosanostra skatepark where a park was built for the contest that might skyrocket the amount of Parisian transition riders in the future. The international transition elite this weekend already showed what is possible in there. Even Tony Hawk got excited. If you missed it, here’s the webcast of the final. Or follow us on our way along the poolcoping.

Lilly Stoephasius – Rock 'n' Roll

Poppy Starr Olsen – Frontside Smith

Grace Marhoefer – Backside 50-50

You know that feeling when the weekend is right on the doorstep, you wake up and hear rain. Then you check the weather on your phone and it says that there’s more to come… The schedule on Friday got pretty messed up by the French summer weather but on the other hand it gave us time to study some classic print magazines till it dried up again.

Slide the Gallery 7 Photos

PRV

NXT

JEFF GROSSO

At around five the clouds finally were gone and the contest started. Without any warm up everybody was just skating around casually right away. Well, maybe not all the time but Curren Caples later that day did a kickflip that you might have heard. Yip, exactly. That was this weird noise on Friday evening you didn’t know where it came from. Sadly I didn’t see it myself and this is the only picture I got of Curren. I’m sorry.

Robin Bolian & Jaime Mateu

The best thing is when you experience the Park Series for the first time. It is kinda surreal how people fly around right next to your head. This pictures of Clay Kreiner and Robin Bolian show pretty much how it looks if you’re standing right next to the coping.

Mami Tezuka – Frontside Grind

The 10 year old Daniela Terol Mendez from spain won the Womens Regional Championships. At every contest there are new faces and it’s great to see how many young girls are getting into skateboarding at the moment.

Kihana Ogawa - Frontside Air

Kihana Ogawa - Backside Tailslide

Yndiara Asp – Boneless

Yndiara Asp – Fastplant

Lizzie Armanto – Backside Air

Lizzie Armanto – Backside Air

Kokona Hiraki is ten years old and won the womens final. That makes her the youngest Park Series winner ever. And it couldn’t be more deserved. She was floating with tons of this natural style that money can’t buy. And she has some really mean nosegrinds. No matter if frontside or backside, she sticked them every try.

Robin Bolian – Frontside Feeble

If I remember it right, Raney Beres was dropping in a second before his run hand started but couldn’t be stopped. He just kept on going and going and going.

If Dustin Dollin is shouting at you like that you are doing something right. Roman Pabich going for 3rd place.

Being Tony Hawk at a skateboard contest means that you're kinda like the queen of a swarm of bees when you walk around at the park. For sure also Wolfi took his picture with him and grabbed Greyson Fletcher to shoot it. Wolfi was having the best time anyway.

When I went into the elevator at the hotel somebody squeezed through the closing doors. I turned around and saw Geoff Rowley. Even after years of working in skateboarding you still get those fanboy moments. He was in Paris to premiere his new part that he filmed together with Padro Barros and Ronnie Sandoval. I give you an advice: Buy some tranquilizers before you watch it, otherwise it might melt your brain.

In the qualification the Frenchman Vincent Matheron bailed three runs but killed it in the fourth and went to the final where he kept on skating the park with his very own bag of tricks. Most of the time he did this far away from my lens but I catched him with this nosegrind also he was trying to hide with his black outfit in the black background. He should himself got these orange shorts. But still it convinced Doobie to kiss his board.

As you know, Pedro Barros is able to get some airtime. Maybe he spent more of his lifetime in the air than on the ground. I think everybody would do the same. It looks fun.

I might have missed some photos but at least I got Cory Juneau backside lipsliding right to first place. The bummer with this photo is: you can’t hear how nice this slide sounded.

Award ceremony preperations

Whenever you meet this gentleman ask him about the best town in the world which clearly is The Hague and he might invite you to his local contest, just like he did with Tony Hawk.

When you’re the only white dressed photographer surrounded by black dressed colleagues chances are high that you not only take a different choice at the wardrobe but also find your very own angles and prefer to take a portrait of Doobie while the award ceremony is running.