The wakeskate winch park finals here at CWC in the Philippines provided me with the opportunity to see some of the best rail hits I’ve ever seen on a wakeskate in person. The last wakeskate rail jam I had the opportunity to attend literally was two years ago and I can say with confidence that over those two years wakeskating has really moved in the right direction. The maneuvers pulled off by riders Andy P, Reed Hansen, Nick Taylor, and Nick Harlowe in Sunday’s final were evidence of these riders’ incredible technical ability, consistency, and skate style.

The four riders were given a total of twenty minutes on the system 2.0 winch system to hit either the Hyperlite or Ronix rail down about a 7 stair set. Reed started off the competition by kickflipping to backboard on the Ronix rail. It was really impressive how Reed was consistently able to kickflip onto the rail. I don’t think he missed it once. His last and most impressive trick was a kickflip to backlip. No big deal.

Nick Harlowe took several tries, but eventually was the first rider in the competition to stick a front big off of the rail. Nick Taylor gapped the stairs throwing an impressively huge and clean front big. Next he took it up a notch by doing a 270 to frontboard to fakie off the Ronix rail.

Andy P’s runs were really fun to watch because you could clearly see his progression from one trick to the next. He started by doing a nose slide down the hyperlite rail. Next he did a nose slide frontside shuv off. He followed this up with several attempts to do a noseslide front big out. It almost seemed like he might not stick it, but in a dramatic finale to the event, he finally stuck the frontbig out. Perfection. The crowd went wild. The rest is history.

PS Sorry for the lack of photos, I "misplaced" my camera during one of the parties…oops