31st World Championships- Oakland- Finals
I’m going to post about the men’s finals. If you want to read more about the competition from various player perspectives, head to the Footblogs section at www.modified.in already there are some writeups of various events from Ken Somolinos, Jay Boychuk, Reid Strellner, myself and a few more.
Today’s post though, it just talks about the main event, the Routines finals. It came down to a top 9. There are normally only 8 in the finals, but Vasek and Damian tied…for second, in the semi, so they both went through.
First up, Milan Benda.
I guess we’re looking at the results from the pools, because if they looked at any other tournament results from this year, there’s no way Milan would have been the lowest seed.
So he did the same routine he did in the earlier rounds, it starts of with this 1920s style music or something, it turns out to be that song “All That Jazz”.
With some of these European players, you really wonder…how did they find this song? Do they enjoy listening to this, is this what they listen to every day?
So anyway, he started out at a pretty fast pace, a lot of shuffle stuff which was kind of on the beat, then he’d have a knee bump or something right on the beat, right through the routine there’s really hard tricks. You’ve probably seen it on video, so I’ll just say he hit ripstein early on and the final trick was stepping whirling swirl and it was dropless.
My first thought was actually “he just won” but I managed to convince myself out of that, right up until it was announced that he won.
Next up Damian Gielnicki from Poland. As the seeding was done just from the results from the actual tournament, rather than a total seeding, you had a couple of the favourites in the lowest seeds. Damian came out to some crazy mix of classical and heavy metal, I think it’s the same routine he did at Euros. There were a lot of hard tricks, but he did have one drop and that was going to cost him.
There were a couple of US players in a row after this, representing on their home soil. Gordon Bevier, then Jim Penske. I think Gordon’s execution on his finals routine was really poor. Maybe the pressure got to him. It was the same routine that he had performed strongly earlier in the week, but he had lots of drops and was not going to come into calculations.
On watching the video again, it was just his middle section that let him down. Within a short period he made a number of mistakes, which led to more drops, but he actually finished very strongly.
So Bevier, then Penske. Penske’s was good, he had some drops, but I think even dropless, it wasn’t quite enough to take it out. He had some really strong tricks in there, but I really think Milan’s dropless routine had really put a hole in the other confidence of other players.
The 5th seed (waddya mean) was Vasek. Although it was a reasonably strong routine, just as in Euros, he had a drop where he kicked it away, and didn’t seem in such a hurry to pick the bag back up and get straight back into the routine. Still pretty good, but that wasn’t the championship routine.
Poland’s own Norek, he started off very well, but midway through dropped on a clipper, and I think that was his downfall. The confidence started to slip. The choreography doesn’t seem as present in parts of this routine. He is one of the best technical players in the world though, so I would say he was hoping his technical ability would send him up the order. A good routine, but it probably wasn’t going to see the podium.
Nick Landes was next up. We’d seen Nick beat out a couple of the favourites in the semi finals with that amazing dropless routine, could he do it again? He just needs to not drop it. So he dropped within the first 3 contacts, and that was it. Pressure’s on. Shows the intensity of the finals, and also the importance of a good start for your confidence.
Still, for all these guys, it’s a big deal to be in the finals at all. So we’ve got two to go, Honza comes out, I’ve probably got all this order wrong. Apologies if so, it was a little while ago now.
So Honza, I thought he had great choreography, but he had that killer drop. I felt he was so due for a title. So many seconds, and this year, he finally had a Euros worthy winning routine, but Clavens comes along to win.
Speaking of, there was one competitior left. So all the cards were on the tables, but really, David had shown his hand already, he was using the same Ke$ha song as the semis and the Euros routine as well.
Unfortunately from watching the Euros video quite regularly, it seems I’ve learnt all the words. What a terrible song. So he did the routine just the same has he had before, super professionally, no drops, no worries. The question was though, was that better than Milan’s, all that time ago. Would some of the other players come into contention?
The players gathered around the judging table, hoping for a quick result. Reading the body language, Milan looks really unhappy, I say to someone, Milan hasn’t won, he looks angry. So eventually all these players have been shoo-ed away, and the scores can be finalised.
Peter Irish reads out the results: Bevier, Landes, Penske, Norek, Vasek, Honza, 3rd DAMIAN GIELNICKI 2nd DAVID CLAVENS, new world champion MILLLLAAAAANNN BEEEENNNDDDAAA.
Just before that moment, he had a different look to before, he looked absolutely -on top of the world- (sorry). Like maybe he had just won an important event, such as the World Championships. Chris Ott came and shook his hand, that signalled what was happening.
So it was all over. People went different ways to get dinner etc, the net finals were on concurrently so a lot of the freestyle contingent went over there to watch.
Some circles started to form. This was one of note:
From there the shred went literally all night. Dylan Fry played for 8 hours, some say he ended up collapsing on the floor through exhaustion. At the end Australia’s own Ryan Richardson was still going. People were still kicking at 7am.
What the author failed to mention was that Milan had set the difficulty so high that only Damian or even Penske had the physical ability present in their routine to match or exceed Milan’s 6 Triple dexterity moves including a few that make even the best cringe, especially in a competition of this magnitude. Milan opens with furious same legover (triple) and ends with stepping whirling swirl (triple). Clavens, while fresh off a win in Circle Comps, only produced 1 alpine fog (triple), which was his only triple dexterity move. In today’s competitive climate, difficulty has taken a front seat to choreography, especially in a dropless routine. Bravo to all competitors!
31st world championships oakland finals.. Dandy