European Skateboarding Championship - Nizhny Novgorod. Russia

If last year European Skateboarding Championship (ESC) made its return to Basel, Switzerland, after eight-year break, then this year ESC made its debut to Russia. Russia’s famous Moscow and Saint-Petersburg were skipped and contest was held in Nizhy Novgorod. I was lucky enough to go there, participate and experience this “first time ever”. It was supposed to be an epic week full of skateboarding action along with side events and believe me – it was!

I was on the same plane from Moscow with Vincent Milou, Axel Cruysberghs and Romario Siimer. At the arrival we were awaited by volunteers, who were assigned to be helpers for international riders. Basically, every rider had a volunteer to help them with getting around, except me, since I fortunatelly know Russian, which surprised many locals who tried to speak English to me, which is not very advanced language amongst youngsters there. We had a shuttle bus from the airport to official hotel and that ride gave all of us first impressions of Nizhy.

We saw a tram suddenly roll backwards, heavy rain caused traffic jams and the traffic itself is hectic since they are allowed to speed up to 80 km/h in the city. On this ride I got to talk with skateboarder from Chelyabinsk, who was then volunteering. He told me how skateboarding is developing in Russia at this point and it seemed pretty similar to situation in Baltics, but still a little behind. All this Olympic Skateboarding is currently changing mind-sets of both big and small governments which leads to more and more new skateparks being built all over this huge country. And Moscow is progressing fast as the capital of street skating.

If last year European Skateboarding Championship (ESC) made its return to Basel, Switzerland, after eight-year break, then this year ESC made its debut to Russia. Russia’s famous Moscow and Saint-Petersburg were skipped and contest was held in Nizhy Novgorod. I was lucky enough to go there, participate and experience this “first time ever”. It was supposed to be epic week full of skateboarding action along with side events and believe me – it was!

I was on the same plane from Moscow with Vincent Milou, Axel Cruysberghs and Romario Siimer. At the arrival we were awaited by volunteers, who were assigned to be helpers for international riders. Basically, every rider had a volunteer to help them with getting around, except me, since I fortunatelly know Russian, which surprised many locals who tried to speak English to me, which is not very advanced language amongst youngsters there. We had a shuttle bus from the airport to official hotel and that ride gave all of us first impressions of Nizhy. We saw a tram suddenly roll backwards, heavy rain caused traffic jams and the traffic itself is hectic since they are allowed to speed up to 80 km/h in the city. On this ride I got to talk with skateboarder from Chelyabinsk, who was then volunteering. He told me how skateboarding is developing in Russia at this point and it seemed pretty similar to situation in Baltics, but still a little behind. All this Olympic Skateboarding is currently changing mind-sets of both big and small governments which leads to more and more new skateparks being built all over this huge country. And Moscow is progressing fast as the capital of street skating.

You can see that overall the city is still a few (or more) steps behind some of present modernisation processes. Some soviet vibes might also appear now and then. However, I think you can experience Russia here better than you could in metropolis. I stayed at the Airbnb and my shortcut to arena went through garages with dirt road, large puddles and wild dogs so I had no will to go there in the dark.

Volga – Russia’s longest river – intersects the city’s area and if you would stand in the middle of Volga looking towards stream on one coast there would be Nizhny Novgorod city with its multi-storey living-houses and on the other – pure forests with nothing else miles and miles away. This view is impressive. If you ever visit Nizhny then take a walk through Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street – largest pedestrian road – which lead you straight into Nizhny’s Kremlin.

The course was built in two weeks by local skatepark building company and it was located in Nizhny’s basketball hall. Hereto, in course’s visual design they imitated basketball course – wooden floor, three point lines, main symbol in the centre and the best thing was a basketball shield as a bank extension. By the way, championship’s logo was an updated version of city’s basketball team symbol, which in my opinion looked pretty awesome. The course itself was Street League type, but more mellow and not too crazy, which allowed pretty much every level rider to take part in the contest.

Everything was smooth and well planned. However, we had one sudden interruption during qualifiers. In the middle of heat two everything stopped, since president of Russian Federation Vladimir Putin was in town and the rumours said that he might attend the contest. But he didn’t and qualifiers went back on.

A total of 24 countries was represented in this year’s ESC. Since not that many girls made their way to contest as were expected, all of the beautiful gender contestants got straight into semi-finals, which probably gave everyone more time for practice. Some guys even managed to time their runs before the qualifiers. Scoring was in a scale of hundred points and top 24 qualifiers made it to semi-finals, where they got joined by 8 pre-seeded skaters based on World Skateboarding Ranking.

Everything was smooth and well planned. However, we had one sudden interruption during qualifiers. In the middle of heat two everything stopped, since president of Russian Federation Vladimir Putin was in town and the rumours said that he might attend the contest. But he didn’t and qualifiers went back on.

A total of 24 countries was represented in this year’s ESC. Since not that many girls made their way to contest as were expected, all of the beautiful gender contestants got straight into semi-finals, which probably gave everyone more time for practice. Some guys even managed to time their runs before the qualifiers. Scoring was in a scale of hundred points and top 24 qualifiers made it to semi-finals, where they got joined by 8 pre-seeded skaters based on World Skateboarding Ranking.

However, it had the same scoring scale and it was strange to see total scores go over two hundred. Top eight from each group made it to Saturday’s finals.

Final’s day was sold out. Nizhny Novgorod came to experience great skateboarding in their hometown and they definitely received it.

There was a tough battle in women’s leader board. With Vincent Milou leading the pack of men finalists, all of the guys took skating to the next level going all in for the points, doing math and following strategy. Crowd loved the creative and mind blowing skating of Finland’s Jaakko Ojanen as well as power, switch skating and speed of Belgium’s Axel Cruysberghs, but France’s contest machine Vincent Milou stood strong on top after runs packed with tricks and high level bangers. It was well deserved win for a guy who been there since day one practicing and having fun.

Last year’s FIFA World Cup left a major influence on city’s development, bringing not only a brand new spectacular stadium, but also modern public transport, digital timetables and better overall infrastructure in central part of the city. Government had to make sure that at least main part of the city looks modern to tourists and athletes. However, once you are out of centre area it is casual to see traffic lights being off as well as old busses with a lot of rust and wheels barely holding on. City has some uphills, which makes it hard for some of the vehicles. Just a fact that there is a cross in the front window of a bus, shows you how hectic driving here must me. There is crazy amount of different advertisement all over the place, they even spray paint ads on the sidewalks, such as “call this number for carpet cleaning”. Otherwise it is a very beautiful city.

Volga – Russia’s longest river – intersects the city’s area and if you would stand in the middle of Volga looking towards stream on one coast there would be Nizhny Novgorod city with its multi-storey living-houses and on the other – pure forests with nothing else miles and miles away. This view is impressive. If you ever visit Nizhny then take a walk through Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street – largest pedestrian road – which lead you straight into Nizhny’s Kremlin.

The course was built in two weeks by local skatepark building company and it was located in Nizhny’s basketball hall. Hereto, in course’s visual design they imitated basketball course – wooden floor, three point lines, main symbol in the centre and the best thing was a basketball shield as a bank extension. By the way, championship’s logo was an updated version of city’s basketball team symbol, which in my opinion looked pretty awesome. The course itself was Street League type, but more mellow and not too crazy, which allowed pretty much every level rider to take part in the contest.

On a first day of the event we experienced fire alarm in first minutes of accreditation, but none of the riders seemed to worry about it. Everything was under control and we didn’t make it to evacuation. There was a lot of security all over the place (I even saw some guys from The Ministry of Emergency Situations) and medics were from disaster ambulance crew. Being surrounded by all those duties gave me somewhat weird feeling, but at the same time I knew I was safe there.

It must be my first time attending contest with two practice sessions in a day. It was definitely enough to get used to the park and practice all of the tricks. Actually, I would love to point out the great job of Russian Skateboarding Federation with all the organizing. We had shuttle busses whenever needed, fresh fruit and water supplies every day (one day they even bring freshly baked patties), cheerleaders hyping everybody up, village of markets outside of the arena, livestreams, quality merch of championship. Everything was smooth and well planned. However, we had one sudden interruption during qualifiers. In the middle of heat two everything stopped, since president of Russian Federation Vladimir Putin was in town and the rumours said that he might attend the contest. But he didn’t and qualifiers went back on.

A total of 24 countries was represented in this year’s ESC. Format for the qualifiers at first was supposed to be a 3-minute jam of three riders. However, at the end on a second practice day announcement said that it will be two individual 1 minute runs. Since not that many girls made their way to contest as were expected, all of the beautiful gender contestants got straight into semi-finals, which probably gave everyone more time for practice. Some guys even managed to time their runs before the qualifiers. Scoring was in a scale of hundred points and top 24 qualifiers made it to semi-finals, where they got joined by 8 pre-seeded skaters based on World Skateboarding Ranking. I was so happy to make it though and have a chance to skate with such great people one more time.

Semis of both groups were held in so-called Olympic discipline format «skateboarding — street», which for us skaters is better known as Street League format. However, it had the same scoring scale and it was strange to see total scores go over two hundred. Some people were concerned about scores being overall low, but I think it is balanced to pro contest scores and here we had a lot of amateur riders. Top eight from each group made it to Saturday’s finals. Russian crowd was super stoked to see one Russian representative in each group making it through – Konstantin Kabanov definitely had a powerful bag of tricks as well as great support crew up there in the crowd, and so did Ksenia Maricheva.

Final’s day was sold out. Nizhny Novgorod came to experience great skateboarding in their hometown and they definitely received it. Front line was packed with press photographers shooting sequences of almost every single push. Cheerleaders waved their poms distracting most men with their short skirts. A couple of officials coming through gathered around crowd of press so large that some of them stood in the course.

There was a tough battle in women’s leader board. Belgium’s Lore Bruggeman stood against Netherland’s Keet Oldenbeuving, Roos Zwetsloot and Candy Jacobs with perfect runs, but ended up 0.33 point short from Keet’s technical single tricks. I believe Candy was a crowd favorite though. With Vincent Milou leading the pack of men finalists, all of the guys took skating to the next level going all in for the points, doing math and following strategy. Crowd loved the creative and mind blowing skating of Finland’s Jaakko Ojanen as well as power, switch skating and speed of Belgium’s Axel Cruysberghs, but France’s contest machine Vincent Milou stood strong on top after runs packed with tricks and high level bangers. It was well deserved win for a guy who been there since day one practicing and having fun. Here is a shot of Vincent’s high speed back smith up the bubba. Moments before he hit my fisheye, but no hard feelings for that. Congrats, Vince!

Surprising and positive award-ceremony closed this year’s ESC. Once the light came back on, a skating dog appeared, cheerleaders had their show in the middle of the course and kids from the crowd ran in to get a session before the park gets torn down. The view of general chaos that took over the course got every international rider like “it goes like this only in Russia”.

Besides great skating a former sewing factory “МАЯК” hosted side events. “МАЯК” gathered everybody together as a skateboarding family. Conversations, some beers, music and all around good vibes dominated the wide space of a factory. I got to meet skateboarding legends Jeremy Duclin and Daniel Lebron, who were two of five international judges for the contest. And now I am aware of why Monster Energy in Russia is called Black Monster Energy.

They kicked it off with exhibition opening of skateboarder and artist Markel Andronov. Markel comes from Siberia, during summertime he has a blast on his skateboard, but in the wintertime he transfers his collected emotions into art. This exhibition was made to describe that movement is infinite. Right next to it there was a wall dedicated to exhibits of USSR Skateboarding museum run by Gleb Benciovskij. I saw some familiar boards and I actually have met Gleb before. He is all around very nice guy and he is doing great job with his museum.

Then there was rich movie program. Before inspiring Tony Alva documentary, we experienced some Russian cloud rap. Followed up by Toy Machine’s stunning full-length video “Programming Injection” premiere. Thanks goes to Axel for bringing it, everybody enjoyed it. On the last day it was all about some Russian action. I mean, first it was an underground rap causing a hip-hop dance off. Then proceeded with another full-length video “Планета Пацанов” (form Russian – Guys’ Planet) featuring Russia’s famous riders like Maksim Kruglov, Egor Golubev, Dima Dvoynishnikov and many more. This video left good impression on peoples faces. When I was on a shuttle bus to Nizhny on the day of arrival, Axel told me that he once has been to Russia. Last year he was on a trip to Moscow with Vans Europe team. When I asked is the video out, he told me “no, but it should be coming out soon”. It turned out sooner than I thought. “Moskba life” also premiered on Saturday featuring European top guns skating beautiful streets of Moscow. Little extra was a sneak peek video from a Saint-Petersburg brand Oznoln. And the ender of this ESC week was a pure Russian style rave party until sunrise.

I am beyond happy on how this trip turned out. Cheers to every single person I met! Thank you Nizhny, thank you Russia!

I am beyond happy on how this trip turned out. Cheers to every single person I met! Thank you Nizhny, thank you Russia!