Steepways Showdown – Event 2 recap

 The Gunslinger Steepways Showdown 2.0

This last weekend was the second event in a 6 six-race series at a hill we call “Steezeways”. Brought to us by EsEfOu’s Craig Harvey his idea is to have a different themed race every 2 months. At this hill we have had “man on man” and this Sunday was “Time trials”.

A lot of guys arrived around skate O’clock but by the time riders had a couple of warm-up runs we had a decent show of entries. I got to experience an event a slightly different way, being injured myself and not being able to skate I got to walk the course and watch guys dial their lines, or sometimes scrub a bit wide and meet up with the friendly crash bags and being able to learn from mistakes.

Steepways is a shortish but technical track with 5 or 6 corners depending if the riders are feeling the bricked finish. Time trials finish was just before corner 6 which made all times under a minute, the top 5 under 40 seconds. This left the top skaters little room for error. The format being skaters can push out the start but then can’t push out of corners, meaning exit speed out corner 1 become vital. The riders had three runs to put out their best times.

At the end of the day, Mark managed to edge the competition out by points of a second with the top 3 being less than a second apart. Great day of skating, the stoke levels were high and the sun decided to show its face on what earlier, looked to be quite a miserable day. A big thanks again to Craig and Katrin(and Freya) for bringing together these events, Bos Ice tea and The Water Essence of Eden keeping us hydrated,  and Gunslinger Longboards and Fat Ant bushings for keeping the shredders shredding.

Words & Photos: Peter Kohne