SLALOMANIA 2006 - Singapore's Freestyle Battle

by Naomi Grigg

Singapore's biggest annual Slalomania competition yet, with over 70 competitors took place on Saturday 28th October on a huge 5-basket ball court sized open air sports ground.

The event was frighteningly prepared, with each of the judges places having matching photo nameplate, folder, stationary, calculator & Ikea cup (the *wrong* way up) - all set out with the precision of an upper class dinner table. All completed with fans built into the ceiling of the tent...

Of course the Judges weren't the only ones that were so lovingly catered for by the organisation - each of the competitors received a goodie bag from sponsors including 500ml bottle of water, t-shirt, aluminium water bottle, key-chain, and other bits & pieces.

Longwen had also written a customised program for the competition which, for each event, takes each judges score from the qualifier, calculates their resulting mark, ranks them, provides a printable table, separates them into their battle groups, which are fully flexible to the number of competitors, and then randomises them so that there is no history of who qualified highest & lowest in each group. Geek.

The competition area was buzzing from 7am, with setup starting over 2 hours before the competition. I say that, but actually, we were there the night before for a couple of hours marking up the cone positions. Hmm. I say 'we' but I just swanned around, having occasional naps because I cant imagine a more tedious thing to do than set up cone spots with the precision needed for a competition!

Then at around 8.30am the Inline Culture freestyle team made quite an entrance. After a night chilling out and playing games in the Inline Culture skate shop, they rock up next to the competition ground in a full sized coach and all spill out in their identical t-shirts and make their way over to set up camp and be briefed, under the guidance of their team leader and tutor, Steven Ismail. The team spans the ages of 8 to 29, with around 50 of the 200ish member being part of the Inline Culture demo team. The Slalomania event saw a total of 34 Inline Culture members competing in the 3 slides competitions.

The first event was speed slalom. With a stopwatch. The real low point for me is a toss up between my irritatingly consistent ability to concentrate so hard on counting missed cones that I failed to remember to press stop when they crossed the finish line, and getting beaten by a young child when I needed to fill in against him during time trial when there was an odd number of competitors. And yes, I was trying. Fortunately, each competitor had 3 people doing the stop-watching, so that an average could be taken.

The battle slalom qualifications were done before lunch and the first of the 3 rounds were done immediately after lunch. It was the first battle for both all of the competitors and judges except myself, though the other judges were all very experienced Judges, having IFSA training and judged a number of local competitions.

The marking in the preliminary stage was a rough ranking, with the judges only awarding two sets of points - technical and style. This is because the only function of this round is to split the competitors into roughly even groups for the battle itself, where a much more structured marking sheet was used. In the first round of the actual battle, each skater was marked on technical elements (split into difficulty, speed, variety) and style elements (fluidity, artistry/confidence/comfort, originality). This resulted in the battle rounds being much easier to judge than the qualifiers. When discrepancies occurred between judges, the four of us would use our notes to explain our rationale and deliberate until we were all happy with the placings.

The slides preliminary round involved each competitor having an opportunity to skate down a long runway and show off their best slide combo. Once the heavens were sure that we were complete, all hell was let loose on us, and the rains tore down, soaking everyone and everything in sight. As the first bout of lightning lit, everyone was already packed up and running over to the nearby apartment block for shelter.

In Singapore, the ground floor of housing blocks are largely open space, with a few pillars, so they are great for shelter.

Over the next 30 minutes, much organiser & judge meetings ensued and laptops used unsecured wireless connections to search satellite images of the storm. The images were examined and debated, and finally plan B of relocation was decided upon.

Interestingly, Woodlands (where the competition was held) was pretty much the only place in Singapore that the clouds had decided to un-zip for...

During the deliberations and organisation of mass transport, the skaters set up a line of 4 cones which a few of the slalomers used to entertain the others. I caught some on camera so will try to put it in the accompanying video.

Once transportation was sorted for everyone, and the press were informed, the entire competition moved to Bishan, where there is an outdoor skating rink run by Skateline skate school. In a country where rainstorms are frequent and unpredictable, everyone just took it all in their stride and got on with the situation. Unfortunately, whilst the skaters moved on, so did the rain... and about 3 hours were lost to the weather before the first round of slides battle resumed.

The slides competition was the first one that Singapore had ever seen, and the first in a battle format anywhere in the world as far as they are aware. Slalomania also played host to what they believe is the first slides competition with a junior (U14) category as well.

The competitors had all been fully briefed on the hierarchy of tricks, and of what was being focussed on during the rounds. The judges looked at the hardest tricks that the skaters displayed, such as unitys and backslide, the number of slides that a skater could put into the one combo - the judges paid close attention to make sure that the skates were actually sliding for each slide, and moves that were far too brief were not counted. The final gave each competitor 4 runs, instead of the 3 in previous rounds, and they were judged by number of switches, distance covered when sliding, and difficulty.

For each run (approach & sliding combos until they come to a halt) skaters were awarded a number of points, and their final position in the group was down to their runs in that round being added up.

The women's winner was clearly way ahead of the other girls, and according to Steven Ismail (who took my place on the judging panel for slides) was also probably in contention for the top mens aswell:

"Rachel's runs were very natural, very high scoring and her best was almost a 20 point slide where she did a low-soul, followed by a low-soul on the other foot, star slide, release, then a soyal, and then to a pornstar."

Lucas did a run that was slightly above 20 points, which was a combo of 7 slides, but he fell twice in the first run, which affected his overall placing in the mens.

For the kids competition, they were all required to wear helmets, knee & wrist pads, and the judges changed their vantage point to being just next to the area where the competitors waited before their run so that they could offer some last minute reassurance and guide them on when to go.

Brandon Lim (15) was one of the slide competitors who reached the quarter finals of the mens, and said that although it was very stressful in comparison to the team practice sessions and they found it harder to do as well as normal, it was also very enjoyable and there was lots of cheering for each other when it was their turn to slide:

"It was more fun than normal because you get to compete with your friends and see who is best"

Freestyle slalom followed the slides, but the competitors were already very tired, and time was getting short. Darkness had fallen, and the rink was now lit by artificial lighting. In an effort to speed up proceedings, the battle concept was taken to the extreme by using just 2 lines of 80cm cone spacing.

An hour prior to the semi final (2nd battle round), the skaters had been given a briefing where they were informed and consulted on the new suggested cone setup (each skater had the power of veto), and they were taken once again through the judging process, but this time they could benefit from the experience of the judges. The organisation were very keen for the judging criteria and procedures to be as a transparent as possible, to enable the skaters to understand more fully what was required to do well.

The speed slalom finals then followed as the final event of Slalomania.

RESULTS

Speed Slalom (Open Category)

1st Place Clarence Cheung
2nd Place Aaron Chua
3rd Place Braden Foo

Speed Slalom (Junior Category)

1st Place Chia Wei Xuan
2nd Place Nicholas Quek
3rd Place Shawn Ting

Freestyle Slalom (Open Category)

1st Place Terence Cheung
2nd Place Clarence Cheung
3rd Place Bea Shiong Kiat John

Freestyle Slides (Male Category)

1st Place Lim Zhan Yu Zac
2nd Place Lucas Ng
3rd Place Wilson Loey Chee Yee

Freestyle Slides (Female Category)

1st Place Yeo Rachel
2nd Place Katrina Law Chee Sim
3rd Place Yeo Kaishi

Freestyle Slides (Junior Category)

1st Place Nicholas Quek
2nd Place Shawn Ting
3rd Place Rohi Goh

Full results here on SG Skaters:
http://www.sgskaters.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=22

I would like to thank the organisation of Slalomania, along with everyone I met that made me feel so welcome and at home for the week. Next time I'd like at least one night per week for getting home before 3am please...!

Links, etc.

Here's a summary of Naomi's articles - either by or about her.

Photos courtesy of SG Skaters.

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