Post
by Keith Hollien » Thu Mar 01, 2007 4:57 am
I want to thank Eddie Martinez for taking such good care of me and making me feel at home in Texas again. I also want to thank Marcos, Bosco, Ryan, Ed, Mike $, Clay, Gorilla Biscuts, Stubbs, Zach, Brete, Woode and Pete for all they did for the race and for making me feel at home. I want to congratulate Lou on his victory in the Sizzler. Nice job Lou. I have to say I was bummed that both Gumby and Brandon did not make it to Austin for the Sizzler. I want to thank all of the sponsors that supplied prizes.
It was good to see so many of my friends from all over the country. It was good to met Cat and I have to say watch out ladies she will be a force to deal with in no time. I want to congratulate Jonathan Harms and Claude Regnier on their wins this weekend. Harm’s was racing as well as he ever has and finished 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 1st. Way to go Jonathan.
I want to thank C-Fav(Chris Favero) of CHIxILL Skateboards for making my models and all he and C-Nova(Chris Novatny) do for Slalom Skateboarding. I want to say it was great rooming with my CHIxILL teammate Steve Lavin and he was ripping all weekend. You should have seen him doing the downhill at 47+mph on a CHIxILL slalom deck with Radikal Talon’s and 3dm Avila’s and of course he was wearing his Top-Sider’s.
I want to thank Matt Franklin for finding Big View Drive. What a hill. I have to say this is the biggest hill I have been on since I started racing again in 2003 or I have ever raced on. I started slaloming in 1976 and have been to 52 cities for races since March of 2003. The hill at Lake Elsinore is the only hill to compare to Big View Drive. Big View might be steeper than Lake Elsinore, but I am not sure. Lake Elisnore hill is straight and Big View has a very nice curve in it. Both hills are about 1/4 mile long. As I repeatedly said this past weekend Big View IS NOT TOO BIG TO RACE SLALOM ON. Unfortunately we did not run slalom on that hill. They had a “course” set from the top of the hill or about 1100 feet to the finish. The first 4 cones on the “course” involved turning then it was into a speed tuck(not that I have much of one) until you crossed the finish line. That works out to about 200 feet of slalom and 800+ feet of downhill. I do not have a problem with speed tucking a cone or two, but tucking for 80% of the course is ridiculous. I think Downhill skateboarding is pretty cool and it is a major part of skateboarding, but it is not slalom. They are 2 different parts of skateboarding. To go a step further what if I went to an IGSA Downhill race and said I want put some cones down on the race hill. What do you think I would be told?
What could have been done on Big View hill? A slalom course could have been set that was slalom and was safe. If we had started about 200 feet from the top and set a slalom course from there it would have been a blast with speeds of about 35mph, which is about 5mph slower than what was run. That is still almost a 1000 feet for a slalom race. We tried to do this, but were not aloud to set a slalom course. The top speeds in the Downhill were over 50mph.
After I saw what they were calling slalom I refused to race. Remember, this was a sanctioned Slalom race for points, not some get together with a bunch of guys skateboarding on a hill. People spent a lot of money, time and effort to come to Texas to race slalom. When I first saw the hill on Friday evening I could not wait to race on that hill Saturday morning, but after I realized what the “course” would be I was just very angry and disappointed. I will say I was not going to miss a chance to bomb that hill though. I took about 6 or 7 runs on the “course” that was raced and it was fast & fun, but I had no desire to do a downhill race. What a beautiful hill.
Keith, Teams Radikal, CHIxILL & Oust.