The Stoke City Shuffle Review

After many years and only a handful of Wakeskating only contests taking place in South Africa, the local Wakeskaters decided to take matters into their own hands and collectively come up with the South African Wakeskate Tour. Although there’s the usual similarities between Wakeboarding and Wakeskating, the sports do have different needs when it comes to set ups and formats. Much like Skate and BMX use skateparks but yet you won’t find them making use of the same features, Wakeskating and Wakeboarding fall under the same dilemma.

The SA Wakeskate Tour is aimed at giving Wakeskaters the opportunity to ride in a format the suits them – 40 Minutes to go out and land your best 3 trick lines both on and off obstacles as opposed to large and long obstacles that make it tough just to do a Boardslide on for example.

This past Saturday (21 March 2015) saw the first edition of the tour take place, The Stoke City Shuffle, at StokeCity Wakepark in Midrand. With a competitive day of Quarter Finals we saw the top 8 narrowed down into 2 semi finals. The first heat being Darren Turner, Troy Allers, Justin White and Matti Buys. All riders started off with some solid lines but at the end of the heat we saw the Jozi duo over Darren and Matti overcome the Durbanites to make it through to the final.

The second Semi saw the 2 groms, Jacques Labuschagne and Sean Bacon met by two seasoned riders, Kaylib Louw and Bryan Loggenberg. Bryan laid it down with some technical flip tricks and Sean came through with more than one solid line, unfortunately this wasn’t enough to kick out Kaylib and Jacques who saw themselves advance through to the 4 man final.

The 4 man final of Jacques Labuschagne, Kaylib Louw, Darren Turner and Matti Buys kicked off blazing with Kaylib landing his first and best line on his first pass up with a 360 Shuv, Frontboard Front 270 out and Shuv Frontlip Backside 270 out. The heat then continued in less than ideal conditions with daylight quickly disappearing. Jacques Labuschagne came through with a Frontside Boardslide Shuv out, Backside Bigspin, Switch Boardslide Bigsspin out line. Darren Turner who killed it throughout the day managed to get in a solid line of a Boardslide 270 Shuv out, Kickflip, and Backlip Frontside 270 out. He also proceeded to ride away from a 50 50 kick flip out during his ride back, although out of contest it still did wonders for the crowd. For his last hit Matti Buys came through with a Frontside Flip, Switch Boardslide Bigspin out, Bigspin Frontside Boardslide line. This was enough to seal the top spot.