Gold medalist Sandro Dias.

The Day of Dias
September 10, 2004

The smell of funnel cake and caramel corn hung around the vert ramp on the sticky afternoon of skateboard vert. Sandro Dias was determined to pull his 900 in the middle of his run, a feat that some people believed he could do, even though it had never been done before. Standing in his way was 03 LG gold medalist, Bucky Lasek and fellow Brazilian Bob Burnquist as well as Pierre-Luc Gagnon and the painfully consistent Andy Mac. Could he do it? As it turned out, we didn’t have to wait long to find out.

The prelims were uneventful. The skaters sweated through their runs without pulling out anything too big. There were a lot of 540s – mellon grab, lein, rodeo frontside – but a lot of riders were falling, and only Sandro and PLG were going higher than four feet. After the first run, Andy was in the lead, but Bucky pulled through to win the prelims.

For his first two runs, Australian Jake Brown couldn't get past the kickflip mute air on the extension. When he finally pulled it in his third run, he fell on a kickflip boardslide to fakie to end up in 10th. Mattias Ringstrom had similar problems, not quite able to find his groove. Bob Burnquist didn’t fare much better, missing an early kickflip mute and rallying for a series of switch hits as the clock ran out. In his third run, he finally pulled together a lein air 540, a backside 540 and a few switch tricks before going down.

Anthony Furlong was distracted by Hurricane Ivan heading toward his Tampa house, planning to board a red-eye and try to locate a few sheets of ply anywhere within a 50 mile radius of his home. His first run featured a 360 and a gay twist, but he hurt his ankle sometime before his second run and couldn’t pull above 7th place. Mike Crum had one of his best runs on the third run, finally nailing a shuvit to tailslide that had been eluding him all night. Chris Gentry, sporting PRO apparel, nailed a rodeo frontside 540, a mellon 540, a tailgrab 540 and finished with a tailslide revert to finish. Andy Mac, who showed off his political leanings, with his Kerry/Edwards sticker, pulled a flawless mellon 540, a frontside gay twist and a lein 540, but he lacked the amplitude to crack the podium.

Bucky went huge with a series of grabbed airs and a frontside rodeo 540, but he couldn’t finish with the strength of his opening tricks, and he had to settle for the bronze. PLG pulled a mellon 540, a 720 and a lofty mctwist, then finished by spinning through some clean nose grinds to take the silver.

But nobody could touch Sandro, who pulled the 900 in the middle of his very first run, finished with a few lip tricks, then dropped his board, jumped the barrier and embraced his girlfriend, women’s rollerblading park gold medalist, Fabiola da Silva, while the crowd jumped to their feet. In his second run, he nailed it again, leading into a tailslide and finishing with another 45 seconds of skating, even after the buzzer sounded.

It was history in the making, the first time a skateboarder has ever pulled a 900 in a competition run. And Sandro Dias did it right here at the LG Action Sports Championships!

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