The sequel to last year’s Highway Invasion and this year’s session in Berlin Tempelhof took place just a few days before Christmas, on December 20th in Linz, Austria. The exciting location was Austria’s industry giant and the biggest steel mill in Europe: voestalpine.
After the first location check, the crew had to face the first difficulties: How could we get the permission to use the pics taken? At voestalpine they are pretty serious and strict about this issue but fortunately they allowed us to shoot a couple of spots. We couldn’t show any pics to the skaters prior to the event though - which actually made the spot even more fascinating and mystic.
So here's the good news: all the shown pics from our skatesession are with permission of voestalpine!
This time though, it was just a very small group of skateboarders that was invited to the session because of strict security regulations of the steel factory. The building seemed like a city of its own, it was huge and very busy. It was obvious that everyone in the team had to take care and beware of the dangers. Linz-local Rudi Kirchmayr as well as Roman Astleitner, Philipp Schuster, Andi Fugger and Tobi Albert from Germany finally got the chance to skate next to giant furnaces and melting pots.
So the first thing to do was to get dressed properly. For safety reasons helmets are a must inside the area so everyone was hooked up with one. Well, we looked pretty strange but this might be the next thing for skating concrete pools as well!
The session was about to begin. The first spot was right in front of a giant melting pot. The workers on site were really excited to see such an unusual action happen. Even though it was really sketchy to skate our guys just destroyed the spot.
Highlights included Rudi’s lipslide and 5-o revert as well as Tobi’s fs noseslide and salad grinds. Not to mention Asti’s solid bs bluntslide on that thing.
The second spot was the most exciting one, a facility to toll up big sheets of steel to coils. Approximately three hours of skating presented some amazing tricks. Amidst a lot of steam and sparkling steel in the background the riders pulled of a session no-one present would ever forget. It was the one you’d definitely tell your grandchildren in a couple of years!
While Asti took it up to vert with wallrides, Rudi fs hurricaned the rail. An fs feeble from Philipp was just as much part of the show as some wicked technical tricks: switch backside lipslide and kickflip 50/50 by Fugge just to be outdone immediately by Tobi riding a half cab noseslide bigspin out and kickflip bs lipslide!
Last spot for the session was the electrogalvanising facility. The workflow for the production was a little delayed as some workers kept watching the skaters showing some serious tricks. In the end, we were really glad that the staff helped us out a couple of times inside the building.
They pulled over the big steel table and some other obstacles which were a nice round-up for the day.
Highlights there were bs 360°, switch fs 360°, 360flip to manual (Rudi),
heelflip manual (Andi) and a huge melon grab over the box (Asti).
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