ALESSIO STILLRICH
Just the concept of practicing our sport in a swimming pool and being towed by a jet ski with an artificial wave as a ramp sounded sick, so I wanted to be in on it for sure! The top eight from the Expression Session in El Medano (plus three wild cards) three days before would qualify for the Siam Park exhibition, so I really knew I needed to make the top four of my heat so I had to go big. Luckily I made second with a one-handed, tweaked pushloop and into Siam Park. So the idea was to train in the pool the same day as the Expression Session finished, but there were some difficulties with the insurance and the agreements between event organiser Danny and the Siam Park. In the end it all worked out and we could go to practice the next day after the pool closed to the public.
On my first practice, it was really hard to pull my sail quick enough out of the water and squeeze my feet in the foot straps. I literally had a couple of seconds before being faced by a two-metre ramp with a lot of speed! After a few tries I finally managed to get it right and face the wave for my first jump. The first day I actually just tried backloops and pushloops. They didn’t go that well, especially the backloops. It was so hard and felt different to rotate without any pressure in your sail but I still managed to turn around two or three tries.
The next day the competition was on and I felt nervous from the moment I woke up. We arrived at the Siam Park a little bit before all the other attractions were closed so we took the chance to at least go down a few rides to get our adrenaline pumped up for the show. Each of us had two warm up runs. We also had our starting order and I was in the middle and could watch the first few guys before my turn. The park was crowded with spectators and the ambience was amazing with the music and commentator right by the side of the wave. After everybody had put down a solid show at the warm up, the serious stuff started. In the first run the most impressive moves were the double ponch from Swift and the pushloop shaka from Ricardo. I made a tweaked pushloop and I was happy. In the second run, Ricardo made an absolutely sick double air-flaka and the crowd were going nuts. The action was so close to all the riders you could see perfectly what everybody else was doing. The Judges and their scores were visible just after making your move – a bit like ‘Come Dancing’ in England – so that was really fun too! I knew I was in 4th place and by my third run I really wanted to get that double ponch to put myself onto the podium, but it could not be!