WST Dubai Park 2024: Final Results!
WST Dubai Park 2024: Final Results!
The World Skateboarding Tour has just concluded the last stop of their Park Skateboarding discipline which determines the top 44 Men and Women who progress to the Olympic Qualifier Series which will determine who represents their nations at the Paris Olympic Games this summer.
We are loomed over by skyscrapers here on the Dubai waterfront, each of which is a small miracle of engineering and a monument to the ingenuity of humanity.
The same can also be said of California Skateparks’ creation for this contest, and we should take a moment to applaud the tireless work of Slovenian master craftsman Davor Milkjovic and his team who have been out here for weeks constructing this absolute beauty of a park.
To add to the atmosphere, all the street skaters taking part in the second half of WST Dubai next week have arrived, so the stands were packed with a clued-up and energetic crowd.
The stage-setting for the women’s final couldn’t have bee tee’d up any better: all 8 skaters made their first runs which also saw the first female 90+ score of the entire contest, with Japan’s Kokona Hiraki logging the first of two back-to-back 91 scores in her opener.
Second runs took on a different complexion with five runs aborted by slams until first place qualifier Naia Laso fulfilled her destiny with the run of a lifetime which included no less than three 360 variations and a kickflip indy finisher which everybody knew was the likely winning run even before the 93 score came in.
What this meant was that all seven of her competitors had a clear shot at taking her off pole position but given only Kokona Hiraki had posted a 90+ score hitherto it seemed like only she might, and when she uncharacteristically bailed on one of her opening tricks, Spanish victory was a foregone conclusion.
A shy but mightily impressive star is born.
For the Men’s division it would prove to be an Iberian repeat as Danny Leon won outright in his first WST final with his first run and only the second run of the contest itself which scored the only 90+ score in his division.
In second came the flawless Gavin Bottger who made all three of his runs perfectly and as such being the only skater in either final to do so while in third came Rune Glifberg’s 16-year-old Danish protege Viktor Solmunde who was the fastest skateboarder in the park by far.
World Skate Press Release
