Chris Haffey

True Street Star Conquers
Inline Park
September 10, 2004

Temperatures hovered around 100 degrees today at the LA County Fairgrounds in Pomona as the best rollerbladers in the world dropped into the park course. Notably absent was Brian Aragon, who swept the park comp in 2003, but missed the entire 2004 season. It wasn’t a problem however as Blake Dennis, Stephane Alfano, Chris Haffey. Sven Boekhorst, Richie Velasquez and many others brought a new level of innovation to the park.

Wilfried Rossignol and Jeff Stockwell rocked the brand new Xjsado skates while Sven Boekhorst was forced to borrow Vinicius Rosa's Rollerblade skates after the airline lost his.

The prelims took place at the hottest time of the day, but still, the skating was amazing. Aaron Feinberg pulled a makio stall on the crow’s nest twelve feet above the ground. Nick Wood threw an enormous inverted 540 over the moto jump. Ben Weis hucked twelve foot 360s to disaster topside soul. And those were the skaters who didn’t make it to the finals.

The crowds poured in as the sun set and the first skater dropped in for the finals. Top-ranked skater, Stephane Alfano, opened his run with a 1080 straight into a 900 over the spine, but couldn’t pull anything else together to climb above tenth place.

Cameron Card, who was sick with the flu for the last few days, nevertheless came alive for his runs, pulling tricks over everything on the course. He narrowly lost to Brian Shima, whose darkside soul to tight transition was one of the best tricks of the day.

Local boy JC Rowe nailed a 360 topside soul and a backslide to pornstar before lacing a fakie 720 over the spine. Sven Boekhorst, who hasn’t been in the US since 2003, showed everybody that he still has the technique and consistency that gave him the nickname, “The Silent Assassin.”

Jeff Stockwell spiced everything he did with shifty airs, and threw in a savannah and a 15-foot torque to boot. Two-time World Champion Blake Dennis showed up to defend his title, but finished in 4th with an amazing wall ride true spin to topside acid.

The top three spots were a hard-fought battle between Richie Velasquez, Erik Bailey and Chris Haffey. Richie attacked the course with power, nailing a stall on the crow’s nest, pulling a 720 over the spine and styling a flat spin over the quarter pipe hip to take the bronze. Erik Bailey had what Jess D called the “trick of the day” with a sweatstance to 540 off the ledge, plus he nailed a backside farfergnugen 450 and an alley oop acid to take home the silver. But the gold medal was unanimously awarded to Chris Haffey who started his run with a true spin mizu down a massive ledge, transfers over just about everything, a 270 backside farfergnugen to royale, and he ended the whole run with an unprecedented disaster true spin mizu over the wedge box.

As Haffey took his place on the podium, he ushered in a whole new era of true street rollerbladers who kick ass in park competition. Viva la Revolucion!

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