Rococo Rail Jam

by Matt Crowhurst
12 / 07 / 2010

Rail riding is most definitely the new ‘cool’ in wakeboarding. Well, I say new but it’s been on the exponential rise for a good number of years now and here in the UK it has most definitely been inspired and helped that bit more through Alliance’s Pool Gap at Relentless Wakestock. This year saw the most riders ever in the event and that is without a complete inundation from the wakeboarding world wanting to get involved in the awesome festival site set up. Strict entry requirements were therefore put in place, reserving spots in the event for those riding in the boat contest and those who’d ridden the Wakestock pools before.

This, however, still left us with an extra day of qualifying rounds just to get down to the nuts and bolts of the contest come the opening night of the festival. 6 heats of 6 battled it out all day Thursday until dark in the less than pleasant weather, with just the top 2 making it through from each group. The rest would be thrown into the Last Chance Qualifying pot to fight for the remaining 4 places available. The usual suspects all came out on top and so with no upsets at this stage and a few new names in the line-up we were on for some of the sickest rail riding action seen at Wakestock to date.

Wakestock Abu Dhabi was going to be hard to top and with no JD Webb or Marc Rossiter you’d be forgiven for thinking it may have been a white wash for Aaron Rathy who was keen to take away his second Rococo title. But tt was not going to be a walk in the park for him or anyone as the level of technicality, style and individuality being thrown down was jaw dragging. Saturday afternoon got the final session of group stages out of the way only leaving myself, Dan Nott, CK and Sam Carne out of the Brit Pack to keep the skills of Adam Errington, Aaron Rathy, Danny Thollander and Phillip Soven at bay. The reigning Champ from 2009’s Relentless Wakestock, Christian Koester was the only one who could come up with the goods when it came to Sunday’s head-to-head final rounds leaving him versus the rest of the world to keep the title on home soil.

His second head-to-head battle was to be against Danny Thollander who had plenty of practice on this set-up that was also in place in Abu Dhabi. His confidence had grown massively with some creative lines and solid tech moves. CK was on a mission though, and dispensed Danny easily to move on to the final. Pretty much two of the biggest names in wakeboarding were up next, not entirely dissimilar to Aaron’s semi final heat in Abu Dhabi against JD Webb. This time however, Aaron came out on top and Phil Soven was on the receiving end of the same consistency and power moves that we’d seen all weekend despite a strong offense from the reigning WWA Wake World Series Champ.

We thought it couldn’t get any better than that Battle Royale between Rossi and JD at the start of the year, but with two new riders in the finals there was no disappointment in what unfolded before us. It simply came down to Aaron dropping one more big manoeuvre than CK but it was so damn close. It took some serious deliberation from the judges but Aaron’s moves including Front Board to Back Lip on the transfer rail, Front Board to Backside 360, Front Board tails press out on the roof top gave him the edge and even CK’s killer Switch Backside 450 to 90 out from box to Roof Top wasn’t enough to edge him ahead. What a way to finish the weekend and with the sun shining too, who’d a thought!

Get yourselves ready for the first rail riding qualifying event in 2011 because I’m sure there’ll be even more inspired folk wanting to get involved!