A New Era in Flowboarding

Congrats again to the USA: the 2010 International FLOW Champs including team members Eric Silverman, Greg Lazarus, Tyler Danek and Kristen Barney!

Wow. Welcome to a new age of flowboarding, courtesy of the International FLOW Championship finals; the benchmark has officially been raised. The contest director kept the results from the previous two days of riding confidential, so everyone was left in the dark as to the standings for both the teams and individual rankings. The only option any rider had, was to go all out in pursuit of the win, which is exactly what they did.

Put the best riders in the world in one place together and they’re sure to raise the bar. When Tom Lochtefeld first turned his dream into a reality, he could not have imagined that a decade later, there would be double corked 1080ºs and bodyboard rolls so big, retaining walls would be needed to prevent riders from landing on dry ground.

Here’s how you can tell flowboarding has matured: in the past, the level of variety among runs and tricks done by competitors was minimal to say the least. Everyone did basically the same thing because, simply put, that’s all they could do. Now, you’ll often see two riders lay down equally impressive runs that don’t share a single trick. Performing the slightest correction on a landing, the precision on an invert or executing a particularly fluid run, is the difference between the gold and the silver. In other words, this means that at the highest level, the key to victory lies in the details. While this reality may be a brutal one, it's very good news for the sport as a whole, because we’re evolving.

This evolution is not restricted to the barrel either. With the prolific number of FlowRiders worldwide, it comes as no surprise that their style of riding is just as varied. The level of technicality considering the size and static nature of the FlowRider only makes the skill and diversity of riding that much more impressive. Who would have thought tricks like switch 180 varials and double kickflips were even possible on this machine? And yet, come next year, they will probably be standard fare in the runs of all four finalists. Such is the nature of innovation.

Some of the stuff I saw over the duration of the International FLOW Championships seemed to defy physics. These riders pushed the sport, in every sense of the word, and they redefined the standard. It’s now up to the rest of the flowboarding elite to meet and surpass the current expectations, while the rest of us wait in eager anticipation. I have no idea what they’ll be doing to blow our minds next, and that’s the fun part, isn’t it?

Looking forward to International FLOW Championships 2011!

If you missed the action, take a look at the recorded videos of each division on our Ustream Channel.