A few comments/thoughts about the Sick One comp.
1. The competitors really stepped up and hit well. Everybody only had 5 tries, and most people managed to hit at least one, usually 2 sick tricks. Dave Clavens hit two 7 adds and a quad dex. Moir hit a 7 add quad dex, and a super-rare 6 add. Nobody really prepared in advance either, since it was a last minute decision to run the event.
2. People shouldn't put too much weight/thought into the judging. Going into the tournament, we weighted the events in order of importance/time we had to run them. The awards ceremony reflected this in the order of prize selection. If there was bad judging in Open Circle, that would have been a big deal. But Sick One? Not that big a deal. Just so people know, the tourney organizers weighted the events as follows:
a. Open Circle
b. 4square
c. Intermediate Circle
d. Rippin Run
e. Sick One
3. The judges had very limited time to come up with results, and didn't use video replay. The reason for this is that Jorden's ride was leaving, and we knew he had placed in a couple events. This forced us to rush the judging in order to get the awards done in time for him to leave. I think the judges had something like 2 minutes to come up with results. I thought they did a pretty fine job, given the time and technological constraints.
4. As mentioned before, the judges didn't consult video. I'm sure this made it hard to evaluate the cleanliness of every trick (quad dexes are fast, and bs frantic set can be hard to see in person). From listening to the audio last night, and hearing the results in person (and from Paul's post above), I know that in some cases the judges didn't even understand/register what trick was hit. I hit symposium whirling eclipse, but I think at least 2 judges believed it was whirling eclipse. There's a big difference in style and difficulty right there.
5.
Paul Agostinelli wrote:
secondly, it was NOT symp blazing eclipse. it was symp WHIRLING eclipse, which is significantly easier than than symp blazing eclipse.
~
I
think blazing=whirling, so symp blazing = symp whirling. I think symp whirling is also called flaring? In any case, the trick I hit was symposium whirling eclipse, and NOT whirling eclipse. Not that I think it would have made a big difference, but still, worth noting that the judges didn't know what trick was hit.
6. Sick One is ultimately subjective. Nemesis impresses the hell out of me for a few reasons. I've never hit it, and I've tried to hit it, so I have some idea of the difficulty involved. But my opinion is likely quite different from Dave Clavens, who probably isn't as impressed by Nemesis as I am. On the flip of that, I've seen a bunch of different people hit nemesis before, even in competition. It's a super hard trick (for me), but not super-rare or creative. Symposium frantic eclipse on the other hand is relatively rare. Can anybody else in the world hit this? Rare uptime set combined with rare downtime component. But nobody even considered this a top 4 trick (people apparently thought symp whirling eclipse was more impressive). Do I care that my trick didn't place? Not really, no. I'm just glad I hit it in competition.
7. Overall, I thought the level of play in the Sick One comp was amongst the best I've seen at any tourney. I also thought the final results were pretty on point. After seeing the video replays, I think I would have given different results for different tricks, but that's the beauty of point #8:
8. We'll be releasing a vid of the Sick Ones within the week. You can all judge for yourselves!
) and i like blurriest swirl. I like style and uniqueness more than difficulty. I also weigh form and cleanliness heavily in sick 1/3, and since I had a bad angle on the Ken's set, and not a decent view of the dexes on Will's trick I still could have easily went either way.
