Report: Never Winter Jam - 08/04/13

Three months of preparations, hundred of meetings, phone calls and mails, 15 people hired to work for the event, all of this to create the best park competition to date in Poland. Never Winter Jam took place 15th of March `08 in Wrocław and surely it was the biggest event here since rollerblading came to life in Poland. The event would not be possible without help and financial support of the Wrocław city council which covered most of the costs. The name – Never Winter Jam wasn't picked up by an accident, which rollerblader likes cold winters? Those long and cool evenings when you are bored to death – NWJ brought an end of snow and rain and started a new season!



Enough of the introduction, let's move to the main thing. The competition lured about 120 skaters from Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Latvia, Germany, England and Scotland. There were two divisions – Amateur and Pro. The Am contest had about 85 participants. The level was pretty high, polish inlince scene is getting bigger and bigger with new talents poping up everywhere, but guys from Czech, Slovakia and Latvia presented great skating too. Among the huge crowd of the AMs, guys who really distinguished oneself were: Łukasz „Elektryk” Kazimierczak from Poznań who as always shocks the audience with his crazy stunts and original clothing – one of the few AMs who laced disaster grinds on the biggest obstacle (Dis Top Acid, Dis True Mizou), Martin „Selo” Selecky from Slovakia who landed clear all spin tricks on every obstacle ( 360 soul, 450 royale on the biggest box, dis 450 royale on the small one), Przemek „Szczurek” Górczyk – one of the ‘young guns’ locals who knew perfectly how to use the park with long lines. The best AM of a day title (1st place) came to Tomek Przybylik from Rybnik who not only did the hard technical tricks like Dis 360 soul or 450 bs unity but used the whole course trying to find alternative lines.



AMs eliminations took ages due to many groups, but thanks to co-operation of everybody we managed to not have any delays and start the Pro contest on time. Here the main figures were people like Martina Svobodova, Almants Nedzveckis, Nils Jansons, Piotrek Combrzyński, Łukasz Wolski, Jojo Jacobi, Nick Lomax, Adam Żurawiecki, Chaz Sands, Martin Darnadi, Mogielnicki Adam, Dave Benski and much more. Unfortunately during the qualification lot of people got injured and didn`t skate later.



Finals gathered Martin Darnadi, Adam Mogielnicki, Dave Benski, Piotrek Combrzyński, Jojo Jacobi, Adam Żurawiecki, Nick Lomax and Chaz Sands. The first minutes of the final runs were filled up with awesome tricks on the whole course, it was hard to focus only on one person, but it didn`t take long to move action on the biggest grindbox where four ‘gladiators’ started a fight with gravitation. Jojo Jacobi did a massive soul, fish and topsoul stall on the rusty pipes above the miniramp and kept finding new transfer options all the time, followed by clean fakie 720 above the park fence.



Even though Chaz had caught some injury two weeks before NWJ proved once again why he is one of the sickest rollerbalder out there – his disaster hurricanes (Dis Hard spin topsoul to TTS, Dis 540 True Mizu landed perfectly, super high corkscrew 720 and 900) Those two skaters tied up for the third place. Piotr Combrzyński, who got 2nd place on the podium and the Best Trick winner is undoubtedly the best polish skater and a machine. His giant transfers, high and spectacular jumps and of course grinds like disaster 540 True Top Porn or disaster 540 trumistrial 360 off was something to remember. If it wasn't enough he simply destroyed the box with his 720 hardspin topsoul – crazy just crazy, I'm sure he won't stop to surprise us in future.



The winner of Never Winter Jam was Nick Lomax, even a bar fight the day before didn`t stop him from taking the title. He used the park 100% - lots of technical tricks everywhere – crazy switch ups on long rail, some disasters, huge spins and airs, the only one who did a quarter to miniramp transfer with 360 and followed instantly by floating 540, not to mention his 4 meters high 180 wallride which made it clear who is at the top of the game. The whole finals were astonishing presentation of rollerblading skills, the crowd among which there were so many people witnessing the aggressive inline contest for the first time were simply stunned. It's obvious that the event was followed by loud after party where everybody could talk about the comp, drink a lot and pick up some girls – just pure fun. Many don't remember what happened at the after party and woke up in a strange places but it was all good!



Personally as organizer I think that that event was a success, but I admit that there were some things which we have to work on better next time. Association “Green” constantly doing our best to rise the level of polish inline and help kids who want to start and improve. Such contest motivate everybody to even more hard work. Never Winter Jam let us to compare the polish level of skating with the European one. We would like to organize such contests more often in Poland. I would like to thanks all who participated, for the good fun, for the high level and for the regulations obedience. Thanks to everyone who helped and all the sponsors, media partners and all guests for visiting us. Foreign guest appearance always makes everybody more juiced and more motivated so I'd like to invite everybody to Poland! See you there!

Check out the edit: http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=C4pQ9LH2l5E

Text: Paweł Komosa
Text correct : Sebastian Gruba
Photo: Kuba Urbańczyk & Michał Kacprowicz
Edit: Radosław Kojtych