Tail wind or head wind? This was the primary dilemma at Seaside 2018.
Practice started at 10am with riders eager to send it down the track. We experienced multiple cross winds throughout the day making the riders decisive when they wanted to take their runs. Before lunch time we had the first of four qualifying runs of the day; due to the hot weather it was not enough to mitigate the wind. After talking with riders we decided to move the rest of the quali to the afternoon waiting for a “colder” temperature and consequently more grip on the track.
The Top 3 qualifiers in Open Skateboard are all within a second of each other: Carlos Paixao, Thiago Lessa and Mitch Thompson, are within the time of 1:27 and all the three improved their time in the last run. The track record of 1:29:04 made by Santiago Espeche in 2017 was beaten by Carlos with 1:27:35 during today's qualifying.
You may ask, who's 4th in Open? Well, the “Prossecutor” Emily Pross should not be taken lightly: she got a solid result in both categories leaving the rest of the riders in the dust.
Following with the Women, Jennifer Schauerte kept herself in second place with a great second run followed by New Zealander Elissa Mah that set her best time in the first run.
The young Filipino Sebastian Chanco showed all his skills in the quali gaining a first place in front of Jan Bryan Figueroa and Andrei Ybañez.
Masters was similar to Juniors with an all Filipino qualifying finish and Caloy Sambrano dominated the class followed by Peter Fritz Siason.
We had just two Lugers in the Seaside and one of them is the Malaysian Abdil Mahdzan, that kept his first position again in front of Dennis "Zen" Andrado.
Tomorrow the race will starts with Open B bracket and the three best riders will advance to the Open A bracket that will take place in the afternoon with all the other categories.
Qualifying results can be consulted at the following link with the official brackets for tomorrow:
https://internationaldownhillfederation.org/races/keeping-it-high-seaside-2018/
