At the end of every year, or indeed several weeks into the following year, people across the world will look back and reflect upon the last twelve months of their lives, the things they’ve achieved, the things they’ve witnessed and what they can carry through into the new year.
This was very much the situation amongst the LateTricks team, so we’ve pooled together some of our favourite and most memorable moments from 2013, along with the freestylers themselves who made them so fantastic.
In the first of several articles, we’ve selected our pick of the most influential and highest placing professional freestylers from across the globe. After careful deliberation and possibly too much time spent watching freestyle videos, here are the three riders we’ve picked out as our top pros of 2013.
Sebastian Heupel
Sebastian is one of our top pros this year, not only based on his stellar contest performance, but also for his promotion and development of freestyle skateboarding with mainstream audiences. Even with TV Spots, demonstrations and touring this year, Sebastian managed to take 2nd at the Europa Cup in Germany and 1st place at Paderborn and the World Championships.
Gunter Mokulys
Having spent years dominating just about every freestyle contest going, Gunter Mokulys has had another fantastic year in 2013. His year started off strong with an early win in the Europa cup before returning to Canada for the 2013 World Round Up and taking the top spot. Having placed 2nd in 2012, the victory was all the sweeter, as Gunter claimed his tenth world title.
Toshiaki Fujii
Having played an important part in the development of freestyle in Japan for over a decade, Toshiaki has also continued to develop his own skating, working together with Masahiro Fujii to release one of the top sections of the year. Just giving him the edge over Masahiro in our selection, Toshiaki’s impressive display of consistency and variety in 2014’s most exciting event, the Head to Head Showdown in Japan, was a true marvel to watch
Honourable Mentions:
Mike Osterman – Third place in the world round up and a rather spectacular video part
Terry Synnott – First place in the US Championship and continual trick progression clips on the Mode Skateboards Facebook Page
Masahiro Fujii – Fourth in the World Round Up, ground-braking video part and development of freestyle community in Japan
Marco Sassi – Landed the elusive 360 carousel also putting together a great run and taking 4th in the Paderborn freestyle contest
Christian Heise – The years most consistent freestyler, third in the World Championship, multiple high place results and development of Never Enough Skate Brigade.
So those are our picks for this year, but we really want to hear from our readers who you thought really stood out this year. Join the discussion on the LateTricks facebook page or on Twitter @FSLateTricks. Next we’ll be looking at our top three amateur freestylers of 2013, so make sure you check back soon for the full run-down
