Day 1 at Red Bull Bowl Rippers: The Prado Bowl Gets Loud
Wind, giant concrete walls, oversized pants, Olympic-level transition skating and one very busy ambulance. Welcome to Marseille.
Day one at Red Bull Bowl Rippers 2026 started exactly how you might expect a skate event in Marseille to start: the bowl was freshly painted, the riders were arriving, the sky was grey, and the wind was blowing through the Prado Bowl like it had somewhere else to be.
Welcome to Marseille.
Welcome to Bowl Rippers.
And welcome to four days of watching people voluntarily throw themselves around a giant concrete swimming pool.
The Prado Bowl Is Not Your Average Skatepark
If you've never been to the Bowl du Prado, the first thing you notice is the location.
It's basically sitting next to the ocean.
The bowl was built in 1991 and has become one of the most famous skateparks in Europe, with several interconnected concrete sections, a spine and a deep section that drops to around 2.7 metres. It has been copied elsewhere, appeared in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, and spent decades turning very good skateboarders into people who apparently don't understand the concept of gravity.
And yes, the ocean is literally right there.
Which means that, in theory, if you get screamingly hot during a skate session, you can just run into the sea, cool down and come straight back.
I assume that's how the locals do it.
I have absolutely no evidence for this.
It just feels correct.
First Up: The Women
The first riders into the bowl were the women, and watching the practice session immediately made one thing clear:
This thing is intimidating.
The Prado Bowl has some seriously deep and gnarly sections, and when you see riders dropping into it at speed, the concrete suddenly looks a lot bigger than it did five minutes earlier.
Bryce Wettstein, the winner of the 2023 Bowl Rippers, was already spreading the good vibes, while Yurin Fujii was doing what Yurin Fujii always does: looking ridiculously good on a skateboard.
Clubmaitee turned up in a pair of pants so enormous they probably have their own postal code, riding a massive Heroin deck like it was completely normal.
Meanwhile, the rest of the women's field were attacking the bowl with the kind of confidence that makes you briefly question whether you're even watching the same sport.
The deep section?
Gnarly.
The speed?
Fast.
The walls?
Much, much higher when you're standing next to them.
And then there was the wind.
Because apparently skating a huge bowl wasn't enough of a challenge.
"I Don't Want It To End"
After two hours of practice, Bryce summed up the mood pretty perfectly.
"I don't want it to end. It's so much fun."
And honestly, that's probably the best possible review of Bowl Rippers.
Because from the outside, this place looks terrifying.
From inside, apparently it's the best playground imaginable.
The women wrapped up their practice and the bowl suddenly got a lot louder.
Because now it was the boys' turn.
Then The Boys Dropped In
The volume went up.
So did the speed.
And then it went up again.
The men's practice session brought out some of the biggest names in transition skating, with riders like Yam Behar, Gavin Bottger, Grayson Fletcher, Hampus Winberg and Ivan Federico attacking the bowl from basically every possible direction.
The format makes the whole thing feel slightly chaotic in the best possible way.
Instead of calmly waiting for one rider to finish before the next person drops in, riders are constantly moving through the bowl, crossing lines, carving walls and trying to find space for another ridiculous trick.
From the sidelines, it looks like someone has taken a perfectly normal skatepark and turned the difficulty setting all the way up.
And then asked everyone to go faster.
The High Wall Challenge
One rider spent a good chunk of the session repeatedly trying to land a trick right at the top of one of the highest walls.
Again.
And again.
And again.
At some point you start thinking:
Maybe stop trying that.
Then you remember you're watching professional skateboarders at Red Bull Bowl Rippers.
Stopping is apparently not part of the program.
Eventually, one attempt ended with a seriously heavy slam. Hard enough that the ambulance crew, who had been looking like they were going to have a fairly relaxed afternoon, finally had something to do.
We didn't catch the rider's name at the time, so we'll leave that one open rather than pretend we know.
If you know who it was, let us know.
From The Sidelines, It Looks Completely Insane
One of the best things about Bowl Rippers is how different it feels from watching a normal skate contest.
There isn't really a quiet moment.
Someone is dropping in.
Someone is flying over the spine.
Someone is carving through the deep.
Someone is trying something that looks physically impossible.
And because riders are coming in from different sides of the bowl, every run feels like it could suddenly collide with another one.
It's fast, unpredictable and slightly terrifying.
Which is exactly what you want from a bowl contest.
DOSE was posting some of the longest and most fun runs we caught throughout the day, trying to grab the moments that actually made us stop filming for a second and just watch.
Not every ridiculous trick makes it onto camera.
That's just how it goes when the whole place is moving at once.
And This Was Only Day One
That's probably the slightly ridiculous part.
After watching some of the best transition skaters in the world spend the day going full speed around one of the most intimidating bowls in Europe, this was still only the beginning.
The real competition is still ahead.
More riders are coming.
More tricks are coming.
More people are going to discover that the Prado Bowl has walls that look considerably less friendly when you're standing at the bottom of them.
And DOSE is here for all of it.
We'll be back at the bowl tomorrow, cameras ready and probably slightly concerned about what we're about to see.
Because if this was only practice, we're not entirely sure what the next few days are going to look like.
Day one was just the warm-up.
Marseille, we're ready.
Note: The top image is from Bowl Rippers 2023 and features Gavin Bottger.
