Toe Jam Day 2- The Boat
So i just got back from the boat finals at this years Toe Jam, a little buzzed and busch’d out, but ready to give you the what’s what on day 2 of Toe Jam 08.
Great day.. I caught 3 bass off 5 casts.. yes yes.. i did. One of my best bass sessions ever. The weather was good and that cold front that we had here during the week pulled out just in time for the sun to burn my lip yesterday and managed to give it another beating today. Let me start off by saying that the qualifier yesterday was crazy. So many good riders and only 16 spots available. Congrats to the guys that qualified and made it to ride boat today and rail finals tomorrow, that’s a beaut right there.
I didn’t see much of the first round, but from what i heard Stu Shinn lived up to the word on the lakes and killed it. He bombed a nice run and took out Matt Hooker in the first heat. Matt absolutely killed it yesterday in qualifying , getting on top of some huge rails and taking a whole new line out there. Brandon Thomas pipped Ben Horan and Reed Hansen beat Nick Harlos, putting himself in the quarters with Bret Little, Andy Pastura and Nick Taylor. One of the heaviest heats of the day had to be Steve Campbell and Brian Grubb. Steve got a solid run in with a bunch of goodies in the flats. Hammering a f/s big, b/s big, 3 shuv, kicky and f/s flip, with a b/s 3 wake 2 wake and some other wake stuff. Grubb fell a few times but managed to squeeze in some nice hammers. He got a nice indy hs and ts shuv adding fs 360 and an indy shuv to fakie and managed to impress the judges enough to go through to the quarters finals. Danny Hamspon and Clint Tompkins were head to head in the qualifiers. Danny didn’t get the run he quite wanted (he was still suffering from a bit of illness,) but managed to throw a late wake to wake F/S bigspin at the end of his run. Clint ended up taking it, though, with a solid eye pleasing pass as we all used to seeing.
Around about the quarters you know that every heat is gonna be an eye opener with every rider being forced to throw their big numbers to make it into the top 4. One of the heavy heats was Andy P and Reed Hansen, which could’ve been a final right there.. Not a lot of you people know about Andy P, but he is one of the best skaters out there. Reed knows that and didn’t hold back, putting in switch and regular FS 3’s and the first wake 2 wake indy fligerflip in a competition. That left Andy standing on the dock with no option but to lay it down. He went out and started off solid with a bunch stuff and was holding his own, until he went down. He got up and tried a wake-to-wake late body varial and went down again, giving a Reed a spot in the semi’s. Nick Taylor had a clean solid run again and beat Stu Shinn doing all his spins wake 2 wake as clean as ever. You would think there was some dude on the shore with a Nick Taylor remote control wakeskater. So solid!
Semis started off pretty funny with no one wanting to ride against each other. Apparently there was a bit mix up with who was supposed to ride against who, but Nick and Grubb were in the first semi heat together. Nick had another solid ride and ended up beating Grubb (yeah, that didn’t happen once last year) to make it to the Finals. Reed and Brandon where in the other semi final. Brandon had a good run, but it wasn’t good enough to beat Reed’s pass even though he didn’t manage to land his indy finger flip.
So it was Nick and Reed in the Finals… Ooooh sheet. I saw some nice stuff being thrown around in the finals. I’m not allowed to say but tomorrow we’ll know the results for that for sure. So make sure to you check back to see who won today and who will take the Rail park finals. Another good day of beverages, sun, hopefully a few bass and some pleasant wakeskating. I’m amped!
Oh boy, the press release is out and Reed Hansen took it! Congrats Reed.
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Semi Finals:
Heat 1:
Nick Taylor
Brian Grubb
Heat 2:
Reed Hansen
Brandon Thomas
Quarter Finals:
Heat 1:
Clint Tompkins
Brian Grubb
Heat 2:
Brett Little
Brandon Thomas
Heat 3:
Reed Hansen (1st W to W finger flip in competition)
Andrew Pastura
Heat 4:
Nick Taylor
Stewart Shinn
Qualifying Final:
Heat 1:
Stewart Shinn
Matt Hooker
Heat 2:
Ben Horan
Brandon Thomas
Heat 3:
Reed Hansen
Nick Harlos
Heat 4:
Brian Grubb
Steve Campbell
Heat 5:
Clint Tompkins
Danny Hampson
Heat 6:
Bret Little
Enric Dosta
Heat 7:
Ryan Doyle
Andrew Pastura
Heat 8:
Ross Gardner
Nick Taylor
