Two small crashes, not serious at all, more of a „bike-dropping“ kind of way, brought me 10 penalty points in the finals and bounced me back to a disappointing 6th place. This points-deduction has been new this year, minus 5 for each “crash”, minus 1 for a shaky execution. On the other hand, the (positive) attribution of points has been used by the judges to the full extend, leaving no big points-differences in the top field. So even throwing down a technically difficult run – my style, generally - didn’t pay off: little to gain, but a lot to lose.
I also had to learn that even in Florida it is raining occasionally. Too bad I’ve had to learn that right before the finals were supposed to get underway. A start-delay has been agreed upon by the organizer in order to offer equal conditions to everyone. With a 20 degrees Celsius and light winds, it all dried up very quickly, anyway.
What else? An incredibly high total of 96 stunters entered the qualification and were battling for the desired 10 spots of the finals. Last year’s podium has automatically been pre-qualified, so Dan Jackson and myself were in. The third guy from last year, Scary Gary Hefferan, has unfortunately quit his stunting career, before. So we were 12 in total, each of us having 5 minutes of individual freestyle to show. Chris “Teach” Mc Neil took the victory. See www.stuntwars.com for all results.