Yuto Horigome Tops Men’s Pro Street Qualifiers

The best view on Friday to watch the Dew Tour 2018 Men’s Pro Street Qualifiers was from three stories up in the VIP tower. From the tower you could see familiar faces such as Bam Margera mingling with unfamiliar, the water and sand of Long Beach and the grandstands buzzing with life, filling in and out to watch what is arguably the best day of competition.

There were 25 skaters split between 5 heats, each taking two, 60-second runs with only the best score counting. That all added up to an immeasurable amount of amazing skating all going down on the brand new triangular course of tech, rails and gaps sections.

Kicking off with Chris “Cookie” Colbourn, winner of the Am Final, and he used every piece of the park. Hitting every major section, Cookie really made everyone light up when he landed a nosepiece 270 in on the only quarter pipe section.

However, by the end of the first heat it  was Trent McClung in the lead following a flawless run that finished with a kickflip nosegrind 180. The crowed cheered, and the judges rewarded him an 80.33. By the end of the qualifier the score would not be enough to advance to the final.

Heat two was heavy. Chase Webb skated the down flat down rail every which way he could imagine but nobody else could predict. Two favorites were the 50-50 down and thru the flat to frontside boardslide the end, and the unexpected gap up to 50-50 down the entire rail—something nobody noticed him try in practice.

Webb racked up a score of 84, and just as luck would have it he eventually became the eighth and final skater to transfer in Sunday’s final.

The stand out from the third heat was undoubtedly Chaz Ortiz. Chaz treated the rails like they were something of his own and proceeded to land a seemingly perfect run. A 360 flip lip slide and a kickflip front feeble are just two small examples of the level of difficulty from the run that earned him an 88.33 to qualify third on the day.

“I love the course!” Chaz confirmed his feeling toward the course. “Everything is the perfect size to make us try harder tricks in our runs, versus only skating a big obstacle and doing our basic tricks.”

The fifth and final heat of the day was stacked. Last year’s defending champion was the last person in the heat to skate, and after a few mistakes in his first run he found himself in dead last. Yuto Horigome put down the craziest run of the day. It seemed like every trick he either nulled into, did switch or a flip trick was involved—every single trick was amazing, especially his switch front bluntslide on the pyramid rail.

Fortunately for Hoefler he was able to pull it together on his final run and skyrocket himself into second. Unfortunately for Alec Majerus, it meant that he finished last on the day.

“Pretty sure I got dead last, but I’m still hyped!” laughed Majerus after the event, still rocking his bucket hat from earlier in the week. “Last year I fried, so I remember to wear a bucket hat this year.”

Find out who gets fried next, stay tuned to Dew Tour’s event schedule all weekend.

1.) Yuto Horigome, 91.00
2.) Kelvin Hoefler, 88.66
3.) Chaz Ortiz, 88.33
4.) Vincent Milou, 87.33
5.) Ryan Decenzo, 87.00
6.) Jagger Eaton, 85.00
7.) Micky Pappa, 84.00
8.) Chase Webb, 84.00