CARRIERS OPEN 2023

REPORT BY: EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: KEVIN LITTLE, @kevinmlittle.

PHOTOS BY: GINO GOTELLI, @ginogotelli

Carriers Skate Shop has now been open for its fifth straight year and shop owner Fritz Peitzner has been diligently working to grow the inline skating scene in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex and abroad. Since the success of the first Carriers Open, Fritz and his team of organizers have been putting in work to make their second annual event even more of a hit than their previous competition. In the weeks leading up to the second event, The Carriers team was generating quite a buzz with rider confirmations such as World Champions Julien Cudot and Joe Atkinson traveling from across the pond and some of the United States’ best professionals such as Julian Bah, Andrew Broom, Jeff Dalnas, Chad Hornish, and, even X-Games Gold medalist Jaren Grob competing. The Carriers Open was shaping up to be one of the most anticipated professional inline skating events in the United States in quite some time.

And the level of competition wasn’t the only thing that got dialed up a notch in 2023 for the event. Fritz also relocated the event to the newer and more blader-friendly location of Frisco Texas; located in the northern area of Dallas. There he worked closely with the the city’s Parks and Recreations Department team to help make the event flow seamlessly and stay on schedule. Similar to the Eisenberg’s Hoedown event, the team utilized a spectator and competitor-based voting system but this time around incorporated QR codes that tallied up the votes for the participants instead of the painstaking process of counting out physical ballots. Pretty clever, don’t ya think?

The Carriers Open was an all-day event that featured separate competitions for juniors, Bladies, amateurs, and professionals, and for the first time, there was a quad-skating jam session for our fellow wheelie boot lovers. In addition to the numerous skating events, there were also skating clinics such as Hip-Skate teaching the youth and non-profit organizations such as Donate and Skate giving out new and used skates to get some new blood into our skating community. I can say first-hand that this Carriers Open had more junior inline skaters in attendance than any of the previous competitions I have witnessed over the last twenty-five years. Fritz and the Carriers team had a mission to show off the best that skating has to offer while also helping to foster the next generation of young skaters by giving them all the proper tools and guidance to be successful with their skating.

The level of competition was incredibly high across the board as skaters battled it out on the amazing obstacles that the Frisco Skatepark has to offer, as well as took full advantage of the new “Firecracker” and PVC rail grind-boxes that the Carriers team added to give the competition that extra juice to make for an action-packed event. I can sit here and speak at great lengths about how well everyone skated that day but I will let the videos and pictures tell the tale of what went down on that beautiful sunny day in Texas.

Check out the video reports from Kevin Little and Josh Navarifar as well as some of the pictures that the talented Gino Gotelli provided to us and see his full collection of shots from the event here.

FILMED & EDITED BY KEVIN LITTLE

FILMED & EDITED BY JOSH NAVARIFAR | CONTRIBUTING FOOTAGE BY JOHN SULLIVAN