rollTogether #13 Rotterdam full review

I think there is absolutely no doubt that the rollTogether sessions are established in the much loved rollerblading world by now, but as we started it was completely out of our expections that guys from the UK, Italy or even Austria and Switzerland would make their long way to one of our sessions.
We expected the session #13 to become a huge thing, but what we've experienced troughout that day just blew the whole crew away.

 

It was friday and i had to work till midnight because of a poetryslam, but as Daniel Prell called me and told me he just arrived at the trainstation the weekend began officially. A minute later Roland Wander called me and asked me where the entrance, to the cafe where i work is. Daniel picked him up at the MC Donalds and as i finished we headed out to meet up at Lars Echterhoff's place to have a drink, or 10. We quartered and drank till we were too tired, or in my case too drunk.

After 2 hours of sleep I thought it would be a cool idea to listen to some good, loud music to wake up, but Lars' neighbour thought it wasn't, so he knocked on the door and he advised me that its 7.30 am on a saturday and he would love to get some sleep. It was his pleasure that a yellow and ugly van stopped in the driveway and it was Olli. After packing the stuff and ourselves in the van we started off, we had to hurry cause Olli had a meeting with Redbull at 11.00 am but unfortunately our GPS system wasn't in a good mood, so we drove hours to find out that we're wrong. Olli had to call Redbull and they just brought the stuff to the Skateland. We arrived barely 2 hours to late and hurried to build up the booth and to place the banners everywhere in the park and we did it in time for the park opening somehow. As the park opened and the booth and the skatepark itself began to get crowded, I started to skate a bit and had fun at the spine with Daniel.

 

Within a couple of minutes the park got crowded and people from everywhere arrived. I met so many people which i haven't seen in a long time, or never before and it was nice to have the opportunity to chat with everyone and do some smalltalk. Everyone was there, nearly all the Dutch skaters I know from rollTogether sessions, a lot of Belgian skaters, a whole bunch of Germans, the Adrianis made their way from Italy and for the first time ever we had some guys from the UK at a rollTogether. Mark Trebble, Si Coburn, Ollie Jones and Chris Hallam made their way to take part at one of our biggest session till now.

They stood out while skating the streetcourse with much style and technical tricks and so did the belgian guys around Anthony Pottier. Tyron Ballantine unfortunately hurt his shoulder and took a break afterwards. Jeremy Suarez und Lucas Gobbo laced loads of awesome tricks and received nice stuff for that. Jo Zenk, the German parkmonster, laced nice truespin tricks at the ledge and huge 540s over the spine. Joery van der Pol and Rik van Huik from the netherlands stood out with creative tricks and awesome style.

Since session #1 ,which was held in Belgium, Hasselt to be exact, rollTogether has been constantly growing. Within the session itself many little subevents were integrated in the whole session concept, the Rookie of the day Award to name one. The decision to realize rollTogether #13 in Rotterdams Skateland seemed to be a perfect decision, as the whole park is divided in a Skateboard and BMX area, a rollerblading area, a miniramp area and also an area with small obstacles like lowrails and curbs. This fact lead us to the idea of another subevent - a junior session!
The junior session was held in the small streetcourse next to the miniramp, and the little guys pushed themselves to some nice tricks. A highlight was definately the 720° vom the streecourse into the miniramp by Daan de Wit - which is featured in the edit you see below.

The last thing which was on our list was the Rookie of the day Award, in our eyes it was a tie between Jelle Briggemann and Sem Croft. They both did amazing tricks in the streetcourse and the miniramp the whole day but in the end 15 year old Jelle Briggemann won with his crazy transfers and huge desasters, he received a 200€ voucher from Grindhouse, congratulations again Jelle.

So after an amazing day the first people left the park tired but happy as we could see in their faces. The rollTogether crew and some friends stayed till midnight and had a fun session till they were too exhausted. So we left the park in search for something to eat, even happier than everyone else.

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Click to browse the gallery.

Thank all of you for making this another unforgettable, amazing and fun event. Thanks to our Sponsors, and thanks to the Skateland crew for being an awesome host. Special thanks go to Roland Wander and Björn Pakusa for their work at the booth and for being such cool guys.

Hope to see you all again soon.

Yours truly, Maik Lojewski