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Pace, Brown, Hilder and Prangenberg win Simple Session 19

The 19th edition of the annual Simple Session contest went down this weekend, February 2 – 3 at the Saku Arena in Tallinn, Estonia. 

The main contests hosted 150 athletes from 30 countries: 60 in Pro Skateboarding, 50 in Pro BMX Street and 40 in BMX Park. The Qualifications went down on Saturday and Finals on Sunday, with 12 top Qualifiers competing for the medals.

For the first time ever, a separate skateboarding contest was held for female skateboarders – Sister Skate Session. 7 athletes competed in the contest, with the youngest, 10-year-old Sky Brown (Nike) from Japan taking home the win. Keet Oldenbeuving NED (Meow) was second and Ksenia Maricheva RUS (Union) was third.

In skateboarding, Liam Pace USA (Monster) took home the gold, Greyson Fletcher USA (Element) the silver, and Joseph Garbaccio FRA (Jart) the bronze. 

“Sky Brown made good use of the whole course, flying around and doing flip-tricks. She was amazing and deserved to win,” said skateboarding MC Dave Duncan and continued to comment on skate winner Liam Pace. “Everywhere he goes he has these speed-lines. As soon as he got here he did the box jump into this big eggplant on the big steep wall – no-one else was going upside-down this high. He also did really good on the street. He was using the whole park with good speed and big transfers. He was clearly ahead of everyone: the judges felt he was the winner after his first run and the second was just a victory lap, just having fun.”

The Simple Session also kicked off the World Cup Skateboarding 2019 season.

In BMX Street, Felix Prangenberg GER (Wethepeople) finished with the highest score, Matt Ray USA (Subrosa) was second, and Justin Spriet USA (Fit Bike Co) was third. Johnny Raekes USA (Fiend BMX) pulled the BMX Street Best Trick, which was a tooth hanger over pegs hard 180 crankflip.

Boyd Hilder AUS (Federal) won the BMX Park contest, second was Daniel Dhers VEN (Red Bull). Kenneth Tencio CRI (Red Bull) came third and also won the Pumped BMX Pro BMX Park Best Trick contest with his flair drop-in transfer.

BMX rider Alex Hiam AUS (Colony BMX) won the Visit Estonia “Epic Estonia Trip” best trick prize for pulling off a tailwhip to footjam tailwhip over fakie on the Visit Estonia spine.

“Boyd Hilder rides in a different way. He did tricks like nobody else did, like the barspin to fence ride to barspin in and the one handed cannonball. A lot of things that stood out and thats what it takes to win – you have to be either better or different from everybody else,” commented BMX head judge Bart De Jong. “Felix had a really good run. Matt Ray is also really good, but he did a lot of ramp style tricks compared to Felix, who did a lot of grinds and ledges – it was more street oriented.”

Judging the BMX competitions were Bart de Jong NED (head judge), Markus Wilke GER, Brian Kachinsky USA, Dave Hank GBR, Toms Silins LVA and Achim Kujawski GER.

The skateboarding competitions were judged by Dan Cates GBR (head judge), Pat DuffyUSA, Bam Margera USA, Kirill Korobkov RUS, Vitaly Kotov RUS and Pärtel Niitaru EST.

Simple Session Finals were broadcast LIVE in partnership with Red Bull TV with hosts Ed Leigh and expert commentators Tony Hawk (skateboarding) and Chris Doyle (BMX).

At the arena, the Finals were hosted by announcers Andy Zeiss and Darryl Nau in BMX, and Dave “Double D” Duncan and Mark Brewster in skateboarding.

Simple Session 20 anniversary event will take place on February 8 – 9th 2020 in Tallinn, Estonia @ Saku Arena.

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