The Rematch Coming Soon

By: Paul Zitzer – The new vert format in SLC did wonders for pumping some extra juice into the finals. To sum it up briefly, it was based around the jam format, with everyone getting five shortish runs, with the best two counting. From there the top five advanced to a final superjam with the same five-run/best–two-count format. From what I could gather, PLG and Danny Mayer were the guys backing the new format the hardest. Both of them being as well-suited as anyone to do 10 or 11 bangers in a row while cutting out all of those rinky dink set up airs. Unfortunately, neither of them could make it work for them tonight…at least not as well as they’d hoped they’d make it work, I’m sure.

True, PLG came in a respectable fourth, which is awesome for mere mortals, but in the case of the Canadian Vert divinity, it cost him his lead in the Tour and let old Buck Rodgers shuck and jive his way to another win, thus allowing him to recapture the lead that he had after Boston. What’s funny [I guess depending on who you talk to] is that Andymac went into tonight’s final ranked second, then proceeded to fight an scratch and claw his way into a second place finish, but still somehow slipped down to third in the overall rankings. Go figure.

So now, it’s Bucky, PLG, and Anymac in first, second, and third respectively heading into the Orlando finals. But get this, there are only six points separating Bucky’s first from Andy’s third. That being said, if one of those top three guys win in Orlando they’ll be skating out of there with the Dew Cup AND a nice little bonus check. Andy also mentioned after the contest was over that he, PL, and Buck went into the Orlando finals LAST year in almost the exact same situation, so this year could kind of be thought of as some sort of a three-man rematch. If you don’t remember how it turned out in ‘08 I’ll remind you. Pierre killed it for the win and the Dew Cup and the 75k. Andymac killed it for second and 30k. And Bucky crashed and burned, ending up in like 836th place and 50 bucks, give or take. I don’t see Bucky falling apart like that again, so it should be interesting. One last thing: Sandro Dias skated like a man on fire tonight. He finished in third, but I don’t think too many people would have complained if he came in second…or even first. Well, Andy and Bucky might have complained I guess, but no one probably would have heard them over the roars of the crowd for everybody’s favorite high-flyer from Brazil…