It’s “go time”:if you’ve ever dreamed of skating on Maryhill Loops Road, whether it’s free-riding, carving with a grin, bombing it on your streetluge or tucking deep and racing it at full speed, wheel-to-wheel with the fastest skaters on the planet, the Maryhill Festival of Speed is the time, place and event to do all that!Presented by Ex Drinks, sponsored by Abec 11 and put together by Volcanic Productions, the “FOS” is September 11th through the 15th, just outside of Goldendale, Washington. Postmark your entries by TODAY, August 21st!! After that, you gotta show up with cold, hard cash.
So, if you’re up for five days of free-riding with shuttles & support, live bands, product giveaways by sponsors, free camping and then an IGSA World Cup series race with the fastest skaters and lugers on the freaking planet tearing down the hill, then click through to get more details! The road is freshly resealed, IGSA will bring their wireless Tag Heuer timing system for error-free splits on the timed qualification runs, free timing stats during selected free rides and flawless race management on the day of the big race. This will be the longboarding event of the year!!!
The IGSA Izoard Legendary Downhill Race is back for a second year! It will be held August 17-19, 2007 and will be not only the IGSA European Championships, but also an IIDA World Cup and a stop on the French Championship series! The race course is on one of the best known Tour de France climbs… the infamous Col d’Izoard! The start is at an altitude of 2360 metres, the racetrack is two kilometers with a mix of straightaways, sweeping corners and hairpins!
There's more! This year, there's a free ride session on Queyras: the south slope of the Izoard pass, longer and faster than the race course! They'll even put a radar on it to check your speed. Click through for more!
Eastbourne is set to play host to the world’s fastest and most dangerous sports and downhill racing spectacle - including Street Luge and Downhill Skateboarding - next month (Saturday 1 & Sunday 2nd September 2007) at the inaugural Go Fast Speed Days event. The event will also play host to the first ever Soapbox title at World Championship level, which will see amateurs and Formula 1 teams from Lotus, Vauxhall and Honda F1 to name but a few compete to claim the 2007 title.
Hungry for race reports from the IGSA Euro Circuit? Katreen Wikström provided us this excellent race report, filled out with Richard Auden's photography.
The Almabtrieb Memoir
World championship in downhill skateboarding in Jungholz, Austria.
Unfortunately there is a lack of vocabulary for describing that amazing feeling of riding a board – to pass through a landscape sideways. Let’s put the topic more in detail; when you’re tweaking a slide through a sloped corner when the speed, which is pretty high, makes the back wheels slide so far out that you almost hit the hail bails and get thrown off. In the last moment you manage to save yourself from crashing, and instead you huddle up in your tuck and catch up the speed. Do I need to describe this further? This article is not meant to be a frequent race report, but written as a tribute to the beautiful sequences of downhill skateboarding, and above all – with grace to all the event organizers out there.
Can words describe how this feels?
Downhill races are made by and for the riders. The organization consists of a couple of skateboarders and their dearest friends. None is paid and some of them sustain loss after the event. So what is the carrot then?
Only 2 more months until North America’s premier event for 2007: The Maryhill Festival of Speed, presented by Ex Drinks! Make the call and reserve your travel and entry to a week long gathering of skaters, inliners, cyclists, live bands and more, all there for endless free-ride sessions and gravity racing on the famous Maryhill Loops Road! We've just received news about the corporate sponsors getting behind this event, and it's "Ex Drinks", Abec 11 and Subsonic leading the pack. When World Cup Gravity racers will converge on Goldendale, WA to compete for 2007 IGSA World Cup Points, it will also be for a guaranteed total prize purse that's already reached $5,000!
Who will be the Downhill Skateboarding Champion? Will it be the 2007 Concrete Wave Speedboarder of the Year, Mischo Erban or Thomas Edstrand 2005 IGSA World Champion? Don’t count out Fredrik Lindstrom of Sweden; he is the reigning 2006 IGSA World Champion. Or will it be the local hero; Billy Meiners? Beni Weber and David Dean will battle it out in Streetluge. Weber is the current reigning 2006 IGSA World Cup Champion. Dean wants the championship back; he was champion in 2005. But don’t count out Mike McIntyre; this guy is crazy fast. With numerous wins under his belt he is ready to be champion. John Fryer won the last IGSA World Cup in the USA. Fryer will be ready to show them who knows that Gravity and Speed are one. Click through to read more about the schedule, the sponsors stepping up to ensure the Festival of Speed will be epic and the current prize purses.
IGSA Coverage 
