Events

Back in December, our Aussie correspondents Rob Ham and Simon Kelly hosted the national Australian Rollerblading Open in Canberra. While the northern hemisphere was freezing in the middle of winter, our southern counterparts were melting in the heat with record high temperatures paired with some super technical and intense skating. Check out what went down.

In December 2012 the annual Strive Apart was held again in Leipzig, Germany. The well-run local indoor skatepark called "Heizhaus" turned out to be a good host again on this very Tuesday evening. Rollerbladers mainly from eastern Germany gathered in Leipzig to have a nice get-together and a fine skate session with a little bit of competition elements to it.

After the madness of the Shred Cologne contest just two months earlier, the final German Masterships session of the year had a lot to live up to. The frozen streets and horrible weather weren’t putting anybody off, with bladers from almost all of Europe showing up to destroy the I-Punkt Skateland for the 2000 € prize money. German competitors were also battling for the title of German Champion for 2012 and the standard was – predictably – furious.

I had seen touristbladers before of course. Most of the time you would run into touristbladers at the local skatespots, and every once in a while you could spot a small flock of touristbladers in the wild. But nothing could have prepared me for the amount of touristbladers I witnessed the days leading up to one of the most anticipated real street events ever. Everywhere I went I encountered Mindgame hoodies, $enate backpacks, Medium sweaters and more of the like. Us Damsko Kids had been waiting for this weekend ever since it had become clear that the two grandfathers of real street contests would be working together on what was to become one of the most epic rollerblading weekends ever witnessed by man. This day had finally arrived. With it an unbelievable number of rollerbladers of all ages and nationality. Words fail to describe the awesomeness experienced by yours truly. Therefore I will not even attempt to bore you with more of my insane ramblings, but will let the pictures speak for themselves.

The I-Punkt Skateland in Hamburg will once again host the infamous X-Mas Jam this year. In an effort to raise awareness for the event – and to get everyone juiced for December 15th – the Hamburg locals teamed up to get clips for a promo edit at their first "Bladers Only" session of the year. This is what they got.