Just between you and me, I didn’t watch all that much of the International Qualifier. It lasted like a million hours and I’ve got things to do. A lot of the skating I did see was solid, but nobody brought out the really big guns in the opening round. Because, if you do the math, which I did earlier, only 8 guys got cut out of 38, and after like the first four seconds of each heat it was pretty obvious which guys were going to be breaking on through to the other side and which guys were going to be repeatedly banging their heads on the wall.
Think of the International Qualifier as skateboarding natural selection, survival of the fittest, whatever you want to call it. The dudes with the most skills make some stuff and look good doing it while the dudes with the, I’ll just say lesser skills get weeded out. Later when the prelims start it’ll get a little gnarlier. More of a dog eat dog type scenario. Easy on the analogies.
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