Vans Triple Crown Oceanside 2001
Triple Crown Oceanside
The skating at this years Oceanside Triple Crown was some of the best I’ve ever witnessed…
The skating at this years Oceanside Triple Crown was some of the best I’ve ever witnessed. The perfect weather, perfect ramps, and good attitudes were in abundance. The setting was an enormous area next to the beach filled with various areas for different disciplines of Skateboarding and BMX. Two vert ramps, two pro sized street courses, a vert bowl and a large dirt BMX track were the competition arenas set up around the Oceanside Pier.
Saturday was qualifying day on the vert ramp and all the street competitions. I started the morning on the bowl watching my old heroes (the over 30 master division) bust out of their seclusion and into the limelight. Those included Adrian Demain, Micke Alba, Mike McGill, Tony Magnusson. So after watching them warm up I headed over to the vert ramp and watching the top pros sky all over the place pulling the burliest tricks ever thought up! It was SICK! The ramp was a little funky though. It had a huge channel in the middle of one wall and a huge extension to roll up underneath the coping crossing the channel. It also has two extensions on the opposite wall with almost fake pool coping that slanted towards the middle of the ramp. I grabbed some video and photos then headed down to the Street Qualifiers and Finals.
Video of Vert Prelims
Andy Mac – 286k
Bucky Lasek – 1.4mb
Jurgen Horrwarth – 390k
Renton Millar – 262k
My observations for the street contest went like this… Ed Templeton was on fire! McCrank seemed sluggish. Chris Senn was his usual self. Geoff Rowley was inconsistent. Eric Koston was misfiring. Pat Channita was missing his usual tech moves. So maybe there was a huge party the night before and the partiers stayed up too late. This left the door open for the French wonder kid Bastien Salabanzi to downright kill the competition! His runs were a sight to behold. Koston got his shit together and got 2nd place. Ed Templeton nailed 3rd. That was enough for one day and we were out of there.
Video of the Street Comp
Chad Bartie – 1.4mb
Bastien Salabanzi – 1.6mb
Eric Koston – 913k
Willy Santos – 498k
Ed Templeton – 720k
Sunday started with the crew of vertical old-timers showing up to rip the bowl apart. Lance Mountain and Caballero jumped to the fray. McGill was the winner of the day, coming out of nowhere and pulling a run just like the ones from days of old. McTwists, frontside inverts, big Indy twists, etc. Tony Mag flew all over the place busting the 540 too. Cab and Lance were awesome too. Lance made a couple Mctwists keeping him in the top 4. Cab got 2nd and Mag got 3rd. Dave Ruel brought in the most flavor to the event with a moment of silence and the Intro the to National Anthem by the Satanic Rednecks (his band) before the Speed Metal came blaring out at you.
Video of the Masters Bowl Comp
Aaron Astorga – 315k
Steve Caballero – 693k
Eric Grisham – 698k
Lance Mountain – 704k
Tony Magnusson – 801k
Mike McGill – 471k
Then we hit up the Vertical finals where shit was getting crazy! The big 3 rocked the ramp hard, Bob Burnquist, Rune Glifberg , & Bucky Lasek brought the house down with huge technical tricks that only a few years ago hadn’t even been though possible. Burnquist attacked the gap like it was nothing doing switch nose grind reverts every which was, Bucky launched a frontside lein grab rodeo 540 over the gap, and Rune was just Rune. Outright Sickness reigned!
Aside from Vans making all the media sign a contract which didn’t allow anyone to film during any finals it was a good time.