Going into the third day of freestyle demos at this year’s NASS Festival, it seemed as though our luck had run out. It had rained throughout the night, so we had assumed the event would be a total washout. However, it was a particularly warm summer’s day and we arrived to find the demo surface almost completely dry. A few hours later, the sun had come out, the floor had dried up completely and the freestylers had all found their way to the demo spot.
As the demo began. it was clear that the combination of non-stop skating and a lack of sleep were beginning to take their toll, but when Denham Hill made a triple railflip to rail crossfoot landing, everybody immediately woke up! The demo escalated from here, with Tony Gale, John Hanson and Callum Bowran putting together flawless 2 minute runs that could rival winning contest routines.
The session ended with another free-for-all game of Skate, kicked off in typically unusual fashion with a bizarre stationary no comply 360 flip from John, followed by a merciless onslaught of insanely technical tricks. When John fell, Simon took over, setting the much-despised monkeyflip; much to Tony’s irritation! Just a few tricks later, the game came down to John and Tony; both on T, going for something crazy to secure the win. After missing his set attempting a ‘no wrap’ impossible, John yielded to Tony, who set a perfect hang ten 540 shove it to take the win.
Going into the afternoon demo, the riders were still on top form and had managed to draw the largest crowd of the weekend. Mixing up the format of the demo, Callum took to the mic and called on the demo riders to perform specific tricks from their arsenal, amazing the crowd with the team’s incredible mix of consistency and technical ability.
This session ended with the much anticipated LateTricks team game of skate: Team Laker vs Team Chrispy! After some careful consideration, Laker selected the team of Callum Bowran, John Hanson and Denham Hill, whilst Chris went with Tony Gale, Simon Mrozinski, Matt Cheeseworth and myself. One team would alternate their setter with each trick and the other team could select any rider to match. As usual, absolutely any trick was acceptable!
Thanks to the array of talent on each team, the game was closely contested and came down to the wire with both teams on T. Ultimately, John Hanson stepped up for Team Laker, nailing a 360 bigspin underflip and besting every single rider on Team Chrispy!
The clouds darkened again and we worried that this would be our final demo for the weekend. Mercifully. the freestyle Gods were smiling on us and the clouds parted to set the scene for a third and final demo.
The freestylers summoned everything they had left and threw down some incredible tricks. There were deafening cheers as Simon Mrozinski made a thrown sidewinder, Denham Hill made an incredibly difficult 50/50 shove it to 50/50 and Tony Gale made a hang ten wheelie 540 shove it out.
Callum skated flawlessly throughout the whole demo and did an incredible job keeping the crowd enthused whilst manning the microphone. The biggest cheer of the day came came from the final trick of the day, when John Hanson made a one-handed handstand flip first try, bringing the demo to a close.
As the team began to pack up, John called us to over to record a ‘Never been done’ freestyle trick – the rolling triple fingerflip. Less than 10 tries and John absolutely nailed it, landing on the bolts and rolling away clean. With that the team packed up and brought a close to an incredible weekend of freestyle.
We wanted to say thank you to all of our sponsors, Recreo Clothing, Koustic Apparel, Homegrown Hardware, Fair-T, The Lab, Threads and Shreds and Blue Cheese Clothing for helping our event happen, Callum Bowran for doing an amazing job sorting out the audio and area for this year’s demo, all of the riders who gave up their time and threw their bodies on the line in the name of freestyle and, most of all, thanks to everyone who came and checked out the freestyle demo at NASS and all of you for checking out the footage.
Make sure to check out the LateTricks Facebook page for even more footage and photos. See you all at NASS next year!
