Text by Matt Pearce and pics by Ricardo Audenzo
Munich Winter ISPO is one of the biggest trade shows in Europe and is used by a mind blowing number of companies to show off their latest gadgets, newest threads and for people to sit around in big comfy bean bag chairs, 'Networking'. It is a pretty eye opening spectacle: Row upon row and hall upon hall of colour, noise and crowds. It is easy to get sucked in and spend the day wondering around in a daze, slack jawed at the enormity. After a hard days perusing the various wares and talking business with distributors, its all to easy to head back to your bed and steal yourself for the next days onslaught. This show was a bit different...
...Before we even left the Lush bunker in deepest darkest Bristol we were already getting emails from our European contacts with talk of some kind of gathering in the event locations multi story car park. At first these seemed to be rumours and at the time we left they were still not 100% confirmed, but on reaching the show, one of the first things to be thrusted into my hands was a flyer..."Guerilla garage race at 1930. Car Park 3B. Music system, plasma screen and Reb Bull bar".
Music system, TV and bar??? This was going to be good. So after the show had finished and we were done with watching the Volcom and Vans team riders killing themselves on a sick in show mini ramp, we wondered over to the car park, not sure what to expect. We were greeted by a bunch of pysched longboarders shooting around all over the place, warming up and tweaking set ups. Some familiar faces emerged out of the crowd and it wasnt long before we had shots of schnaps shoved in our hands.
The rumours had not been exeggerating. There was a full on course layed out with bales of saw dust, marker tape and the car park security as marshals!!! The course started on the top floor, dropped down two complete spirals, before racers shot out and round a traffic island, and then dove down another two spirals to shoot out the bottom and over the line. The finish line also happened to be the same place that they had layed on a bar selling beers, sausages, pretzels and a TV showing footage from various races and freerides.
The racing itself took the format of 4 riders bumping and grinding off each other all the way down in a blur of speed, smiles and laughter. Top two would go through to the next round. Between the heats there was time for freerides which saw riders heading down en mass, sliding out in corners, running each other over and other wheely board associated mayhem. The advantage of a multi story was a fully functioning lift back to the top which was always rammed with sweaty stoked skaters. Unfortunately, between Rich running around like a mad man and doing his Gollum-esque crouches to 'get the right angle', and me frequenting the bar regularly to stave off the bitter cold, neither of us know the outcome of the race!
But with an event like this who cares! This was one of the most random and entertaining events I have been to. Watching big European racing names like Martin Siegriest and Bassi Haller speed around down ramps on slalom boards was amazing. It was inspiring to see an ugly concrete monstrosity being turned into a little slice of the alps for a few hours, for one night, on the outskirts of Munich!
Since we put this report up, our good friend Andi from Boneless Longboard shop (a co-sponsor of the event) emailed us to let us know the results... 1st Jojo from Switzerland, 2nd Dominik Kowalski, tied 3rd Bassi Haller and Andi from Boneless. Cheers Andi!
