Day 2 at Red Bull Bowl Rippers: Rain, Rippers & One Very Fast Promotion
Day two at Red Bull Bowl Rippers started with an improvement.
The wind had calmed down.
Unfortunately, the rain had taken over.
Marseille had apparently decided that one weather problem per day wasn't enough.
The Women Get Comfortable
The morning started with the women's practice, with the sun mostly hiding behind the clouds and the riders looking considerably more comfortable in the Prado Bowl than they had on day one.
And that matters here.
This isn't the kind of bowl where you can casually roll around for ten minutes and suddenly know exactly what you're doing. The walls are huge, the transitions are fast and there are plenty of places where one wrong decision can turn a line into a very short trip back to the flat.
By day two, the women were clearly starting to figure the place out.
More speed.
Higher tricks.
Bigger lines.
Bryce Wettstein, Émilie Alexandre, Julia Benedetti, Madeleine Larcheron, Naia Laso, Nana Taboulet, Ruby Lilley and Sakura Yosozumi were among the riders getting ready for the weekend's competition, with 20 women set to battle it out.
The bowl was starting to feel less intimidating.
Or maybe everyone was just getting better at pretending it wasn't.
Then The Rain Arrived
The women's practice had gone smoothly, with the bowl staying dry and the clouds mostly keeping their distance.
Then, just as the men's amateur practice was about to start, the weather decided to change the program.
Rain.
And quite a lot of it.
The bowl became completely unusable.
So everyone did what you apparently have to do at Bowl Rippers when the weather turns against you: grab a broom and start drying a giant concrete bowl.
And they weren't messing around.
The whole thing was swept, wiped and worked over until it was finally looking skateable again.
Then, because apparently someone upstairs has a sense of humour, the rain came back.
Right after everyone had finished drying it.
Perfect.
Another round of sweeping.
Another wait.
Another look at the sky.
Eventually, the bowl finally stayed dry long enough for the amateurs to get their session.
And it was worth the wait.
From Amateur To Pro In One Day
The amateur contest featured 30 riders split into six heats of five, with only six spots up for grabs for the pro competition.
Among the riders who immediately caught our attention were 17-year-old Englishman Tay Cunningham, 17-year-old Italian Guglielmo Marin, and 17-year-old Oliver Holmes from Denmark.
All three looked completely comfortable in a bowl that would make most skaters reconsider their life choices.
They weren't just surviving it either.
They were attacking it.
Speed, lines, big walls and tricks thrown into every available piece of concrete.
And then Oliver Holmes took it.
First place.
Just like that, he went from competing in the amateur contest to skating with the pros the following day.
That's a pretty good 24 hours.
The jump from amateur to pro normally sounds like something that takes years.
At Bowl Rippers, apparently it can happen between breakfast and sunset.
Then The Pros Took Over
By the time the sun started going down, the professional riders were back in the bowl.
And that's when the difficulty level went completely stupid.
Alex Sorgente.
Danny León.
Tate Carew.
Kieran Woolley.
Tom Schaar.
Grayson Fletcher.
Cory Juneau.
Ivan Federico.
Vincent Matheron.
Just a few of the names throwing themselves around the Prado Bowl.
The speed was ridiculous.
The height was ridiculous.
The tricks were ridiculous.
And the lines were getting harder to follow because there was basically always someone moving somewhere.
This is what makes Bowl Rippers so good to watch from the side of the bowl. You can spend five minutes concentrating on one rider, look away for two seconds, and suddenly someone else has launched themselves halfway up a wall behind you.
Bryce On The Mic
At some point, Bryce Wettstein ended up singing on the mic, which pretty much summed up the atmosphere.
There's something slightly surreal about standing next to a legendary Marseille bowl while some of the best transition skaters in the world are flying around it and everyone is acting like this is the most normal thing in the world.
The energy was insane.
So was the level.
Every rider seemed to have another gear.
And when somebody didn't quite make a trick, the next challenge was simply getting through the slam and getting back up.
Because the bowl doesn't exactly offer a soft landing.
And Tomorrow It's Real
The funny thing about today is that for most normal skateboarders, this would have been an entire weekend's worth of skating.
For these guys?
It was practice.
The amateurs have now fought their way into the pro field.
The pros have had another session to find speed, lines and whatever insane tricks they are planning to unleash when it actually counts.
And now the contest is here.
Tomorrow, there are no more practice runs to hide behind.
Just the bowl, the crowd, the judges and a bunch of people who seem perfectly comfortable launching themselves into concrete at ridiculous speeds.
Day two done.
The bowl is getting faster.
Tomorrow, things get serious.
