First of all, we would like to apologize for this late follow-up report of the rollTogether #10-session. And then second, we really want to thank every single Fruitbooter coming out for the last session.
Of course, we expected a great day and of course we expected a big session, but what then happened in Amersfoort, just exceeded all our expectations:
Of course, for us this anniversary-session started way earlier – referring to organization and other stuff. It actually started with a big issue with the city of Amersfoort who didn’t want us to have our anniversary-session at the park. At the same date of our event they celebrated the 750th birthday of the city and they told us that they couldn’t provide security and because of that they can’t allow us to have our session in Amersfoort! Security? Security for what? For chilled people coming together to blade and have fun? This situation was then followed by a long and exhausting discussion with the responsible persons from the city of Amersfoort. (Thanks at this point to Ralf van der Kerkhof who translated our Emails into dutch. Thanks for your efforts.)
However, we didn’t let them get us down on that. In the end, they didn’t support us. But the funniest thing: we didn’t even need them to support us. We had more than 400 Rollerbladers, we had the Rollerblading-industry, we had this great team of helpers that backed us up and that funny 500 free-drinks that made some people fly high and skate hard. What else do we need for a good and chilled session? Nothing more!
Very early in the morning of the 13th of June we started off from Germany – as usual with a big team of great dudes in tow and a lot of hecticness! Even though we have hitted major traffic, we still arrived right on time at the park and everyone was stoked by this really big gathering of metal ramps – seriously one of the best parks Europe has to offer. A lot of Rollerbladers already skated the park. We saw the infamous Amsterdam-rocker “Edwin Wieringh” flowing through the park. He called us the day before and said: “Damn I have to work on Saturday at 1pm, but I still come” So Tom (one of our main filmers) hurried up to get some intro clips with Edwin before he had to lrave for work. And what those guys created within some 20 minutes of filming is just mindblowing. Edwin is a beast on blades and Tom – however - knows how to push this guy. No more words – just check the edit.
rollTogether 10 Amersfoort from rollTogether on Vimeo.
While setting up the booth and all the other stuff, more and more people entered the park. The amount of people and the whole shake-hand-situation with everyone just became too confusing.
We were definitely impressed about the high number of German Rollerbladers visiting our session - located deep - in the Netherlands. However, it was not only the whole “ruhr-area” that came to join us, but also people from Frankfurt, Münster, Bielefeld, Hannover, Mannheim etc. Above that, Berlin’s finest Rollerbladers (including Jojo Jacobi, Benny Harmanus, Sascha Krautz, Dan Groner etc) followed the special fun to Amersfoort. Around 2pm the session started to become crazy: hammers and applause throughout the whole park. The people pushed themselves pretty hard.
Our team-member, Maik Lojewski, got to us and told us to check the session at the drop-rail. We were confused: “Which drop rail are you talking about?” Apparently there was a big drop rail at the end of the park and so we checked it. A lot of people gathered around it and watched the crazy ones going big there including Bartosz Beller, Bassie, Arvid Wiegerinck, David “de rossen” Lowyk, Patrick J. Smith, Benny Harmanus and of course our two Rookies of the Day: Etienne Vogel (from Wuppertal) and Orveo (from Amsterdam). All those guys dominated this really scary spot. Bassie did a really quick backslide on the rail.
This wasn’t enough for Patrick Smith, so he laced a backside backslide right after. David Lowyk tried a full speed torque slide that stopped our hearts for a moment! Sick! After Benny H. finished his usual warm-up-program (top soul and top acid) he then started his presentation of how “old” people can still kick asses! And that was truly insane! In the past months it went pretty silent around Germany’s biggest stunt Rollerblader (not in terms of his brand “Chimera” but in terms of his skating). But since that weekend everyone knows that he is back and that he is not done with the sport yet. After he laced his half cap fishbrain there was nothing to add at this spot. Most of the people left this spot to conquer new stuff in the park. But Bartosz Beller started to skate the steep ass rail right beside the big drop one. After he first laced his 360 outspin royale he added a 540 kindgrind. Nothing to add at this point. This guy skated so hard throughout the whole day. When we told him he should skate for the Ucon’s most creative trick award he just said: “Sorry I don’t do creative stuff, I just do hammers.” But Bartosz wasn’t the only guy skating his ass off in Amersfoort. It’s pretty hard to name them all and it makes it even harder when you have never seen those guys before. Yeah there were so many newcomers slaving the park: Joery Florian (Netherlands), Robin Bosgra (Netherlands) and Eugen Enin (Germany) are one of those guys that can make one proud to be a Rollerblader as their style is just next level! Jeremy Kessler (Belgium) impressed us all with his constant hard skating. I haven’t seen him taking a rest throughout the day: He just killed spots one by one! His fellow countryman Francis (from Antwerpes) is another good example of a newcomer. We never heard about this guy but how he skated the big kink drop made us never forget about him. We are all sure to see more of him in the near future. Of course the whole Rollerblade-team (Sven Boekhorst, Adil Farhouni, Randy Abels) showed up and gave us a short introduction of how to skate the park. We all had fun watching Randy how he skated his lines through the park: Always taking full speed to launch a big 360 transfer, followed by a nice fishbrain on the big quarter! So nice and smooth! Sven B. told us "I will just cruise around without doing big tricks at all". That was a big lie! He battled himself with the infamous Jojo Jacobi doing the biggest 360s in the park talking about the big funbox with the really big gap! In the end Sven also laced a really safe 360 from one wobble into the next one. Yeah “just cruising around…”
I know!
Between all those good people there were two Newcomers that completely stood out: Talking about Etienne Vogel and Orveo. Those two young guys had their personal battle throughout the whole day. One of them did a trick and the other one surpassed it again. It somehow started at the big disaster box. Etienne was the one who laced the biggest disaster royale and Orveo the biggest disaster fahrvergnuegen. Both of them got so high and all the people building a tunnel cheering them up: crazy times.
As we started the Ucon’s most creative trick award the battle between those guys continued. As usual Benny Harmanus (the guy with the crazy ideas) was the first who tried the rail transfer from the box into the mini. Etienne and Orveo almost finished with skating, suddenly brought their skates back on the hot metal and started to skate for it as well. I just saw Etienne taking full speed towards the transfer and - we don’t know how he did it – but he fucking laced it by the first try. And then Orveo right after. There was another guy (sorry we don’t know your name) who joined this meeting of maniacs: In the end they (Benny H., Orveo and this other guy) all started to transfer with a 180 in the mini! Enough for our eyes. Thanks for the show guys!
In the end, we decided to give the Rookie of the Day-title (including a voucher of 200€ provided by Grindhouse) to Etienne Vogel. He laced every hammer with so much ease – so it was definitely well deserved.
But this was still a hard decision as Orveo was his biggest competitor! In the end we called him the second Rookie of the day and gave him all other prizes! All in all this was our most successful session and we still get goosebumps looking at the pictures and the edits.
Now I (Olli) want to take the chance to thank some special people at this point. Thank you Lars Echterhoff for doing all the work you are doing at any given time and for being the photo-dude at each session! Without you nothing would work as it works right now!
I want to thank my homeboy Maik Lojewski for all his contributions and for always being the critic guy you are!I want to thank Tom Fratczak and Matthias von Gostomski for joining us on this trip and creating these outstanding goosebumps-edits.
And of course, I want to thank my long time friend Michael Hambrock for supporting me throughout the whole day! Now I want to thank all our sponsors for this wonderful day: Grindhouse, Be-Mag, The Conference, Ucon, Arkon, Razors, Chimera and Gibbon Slacklines. We all know that they always give their best to support us and we are happy that they are one of the biggest RTS-Fans! Now enjoy again all the pictures again and this amazing edit. See you very soon – even stronger and better! Watch out. -rollTogether
Grindhouse
Be-Mag
Razors
UCON
Gibbon Slacklines
The Conference
Rollerblade
