USD, Deshi, Rollerblade (Supreme skates), Grindhouse, toxboe.net, and the ever supporting Submachine.

I woke up early that saturday with seven Swedish skaters and one Dane using my appartment as a sleeping place. The rain was pouring down! I quickly checked the weather forecast, which said it was going to clear up later that day, so I promptly and naively turned down the 20 plus SMS requests of cancelling the competition. I had to leave early to eat breakfast with my co-arrangers of the competition, so the 8 skaters that were half-dead when I woke up had to find their own way to the meeting point once they had woken up and could be categorized other than half-dead!

Luckily the sky cleared up as we ate our breakfast, so when we got to the meeting point, the sun was baking. Unfortunately, the international Roces team that had arrived the day before, were too wimp to wait until 10 am when the sun started shining, so they headed towards Amsterdam for the Truth real street comp. Too bad for them, since they really missed out on something!

In not too long time, the signup line was fully packed, which resulted in putting more people in the bus than allowed, which just made it better in the end. When we reached 12:15, the registration was over, and we headed out to the first spot.

The first spot was the 'Utterslev legeplads' – a newly build playground with curbs that seems to be build for skating. The original plan was that the skaters could skate everything there (it's a big area), but in not too long, the interest of the majority of the skaters seemed to have been caught on the fairly long banana curb. People killed it! What comes to my mind first we Matt Ogger and Daniel Prells amazing switch-ups. Daniel Prell with his pornstar to torque step back to true acid to soul and Matt Ogger with similar tap dance tricks. What is not to forget is also Terje Frederiksens disaster Sweatstance the whole curb to 360. There were so many tricks that were pulled on that curb that it just blew my mind to go blank in amazement – so I can't remember much more (also because I had a lot of stuff to do as a speaker).

When the last heat was done, we went back to the busses, that took us to spot 2. The about 50 skaters that was in the competition from the start skating in 5 heats at spot 1 was now being cut down to 20 for spot 2.

Spot 2 was the Hellerup curbs at Tuborg Havnevej: Two long curbs with a bank in the middle. Like spot 1 this was also newly build just a few months prior to the competition. For many skaters (also Danish skaters) it was the first time at the spot. Since so many people hadn't seen this perfect spot before, the spirit and eagerness to skate the curb was high for everybody.

The tricks that blew my mind the most at this spot was Russian Roman Moiseenkow's royale to backside fahrvergnugen to royale 360, Dominick Wagner's 270 backside fahrvergnugen to soul, Matt Ogger's amazingly clean fishbrains and bs torques, and so much more – for instance Terje's Negative acid and 14 Jakop Juul Petersen's super glue balance with tons of technical switch-ups. I could go on for hours, and I didn't even see half it it since I was busy with speaking and organizing.

From each of the two ten-people groups, only three qualified for the last and final spot. This meant a close judge decision that was very hard. The lucky few were to be announced at the last and final spot.

As the bus arrived at the last spot, people quickly went out to skate the rails. As I had to pack the prizes in first, second, and third place, I didn't get to see this session – but it was deadly crazy as far as I've heard. As we packed the prizes, it came to me that the competition had never been this big before. We couldn't even close eastpak bags for first and second palce, since they were filled with prizes above the top and a little bit more.

When we were done filling up the bags with goods, I went out and quickly started the competition, since the rain that scared us in the morning seemed to be back for revenge in a short time. Spot 3 was a hip high drop rail that first goes up 6 meters, is straight for about 8-9 meters and then goes slowly down again for about 20-some meters. On the top, it has a 3 meter drop.

When the heat started, Daniel Prell, Andy Müller and Dominic Wagner started an insane switch-up session on the long side of the rail. 14-year old Jacop Juul Petersen that was also in the final continued his tricks on the final spot, that is hip high to most of us, but to Jacop that isn't that tall, I would rather call it a niple high rail. Russian Roman Moiseenkow did a 450 royale on 6 meter long side which gave him the second place position. As you might have guessed, the final decision was based on who had the best trick – so doing a whole lot of different tricks wouldn't place you high, only insane tricks would.

After about 5 minutes of the 20 minute final heat, the rain started pouring down! At first it seemed that all the skaters were to afraid of skating the rail in the rain (really pouring down – almost hail!) – especially because the tiles at the take-off were more slippery than a waxed-to-death cess-slide curb. But as it seemed that the rain was going to stay for good, Danish skaters Terje Frederiksen and Jacop Juul Petersen started skating again. Jacop quickly pulled off a topsoul and after that a truespin mizou down the 6 meter drop rail. To me that was just insane – there was no way that you could start rotating the spin on ground: your wheels would just begin to slide – but apparently he had the talent to do the amazing. Terje followed his steps and now it was only the two Danes that were skating: the other guys chickened out to find shelter for the rain and didn't skate anymore.

So now, Terje and Jacop tried to battle eachother, but they also had to beat the amazing tricks that the foreign guys had pulled off earlier at spot 3. Soon they both started skating the flat part of the rail and over the kink down the 6 meter long rail as well as only the downwards going. Jacop did a topsoul all the way over the kink and then switched to a truespin topsoul on the way down, but unfortunately he fell on his landing – otherwise he would have had first place. Terje Frederiksen did a Sweatstance all the way on the flat part and over the kink, which made him the victor in spite of a judge decision that caused the judges headaches.

Jonathan Jönsson (Fifth place last year) was awarded the Scandinavian third place (Scandinavian skaters). The final international results became as follows: 1. Terje Frederiksen (DEN) 2. Roman Moiseenkow (RUS) 3. Jacob Juul Petersen (DEN) 4. Daniel Prell (GER) 5. Dominick Wagner (GER) 6. Andy Müller (GER)

We now hurried back to the bus that took us back where we started. The traditional afterparty at the Australian Bar finished off the day with some great partying, a terrible headache and 7 drunk Swedish guys that spent the night crashing in my appartment.

Hope to see you all again next year!

I'd also like to thank the rest of the SRSC 2003 team: Morten Engmark, Christian Toxboe, Susan Lützner, Terje Frederiksen, Jonas Hansson and Christian Berg

Go to the image gallery to see more pictures from the Scandinavian Real Street Competition 2003.