How to Win the X Games (part 2)
Saturday January 12th, 2008Written by Law
In the first article, I covered the basics of a competition and how to the judges get their scores. If you haven't read it, I recommend checking it out before you read this. Now we'll dive in and see what it's gonna take to make the finals, and help you put together a run good enough to put you in the finals.
So what should my run look like?
Now that you know what not to do, let's dive into what I'm looking for. Bottom line, I want to feel confident that if I put you in the finals, you'll have a good chance of winning it all. That means you need the tricks, the confidence and the experience, to put it all together when the heat is on. It's not enough to just have a single trick, you need to "own" the course.
Get to the event early and watch the other runs, not enough people do that. See what lines are being used most often and try to hit something different. If everyone is doing 540's, you better have a 540 in your pocket or do a 360 over something bigger than everyone else. Same with grinds, if you see a lot of topsouls out there, do a topacid to fakie. Anything to get me to remember you.
How many tricks do you need? Well that's not an easy question, but the answer is, enough. You need enough to fill a run, usually around 8-10 is what the winners will have. Watch any pro run and you'll see it's trick after trick after trick, choreographed like a dance or a musical score. One trap some skaters fall into is trying to do too many tricks. Don't feel that you have to hit every grind and every gap you skate past. Unless you can put down a quality trick, it's best to save your energy and skate faster to your next big one.
I've seen too many runs where the skater hits three big tricks, then in between them they spend 10-15 seconds talking with their friends or getting the high five, etc. Your friends will be there after the comp, this 60 seconds you need to work. Sure your tricks were huge, but they don't mean anything if you can't put a full run together. Remember, it's not a best trick competition, it's a 60 second run. I want to see that you have a heavy vocabulary, not just a few big grinds.
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How much does style matter?
Style is by far the most important thing to me, and probably the most difficult thing to explain. Every judge has their own personal favorite, but on average I think we're all looking for smooth, controlled lines. Make it look effortless, but let us know you're trying hard. Don't be lazy, like you don't care. We need to know you want to win.
Staying controlled on your tricks will probably get you higher scores than if you flail awkwardly but land something technically better. We know that your true 360 porn was more difficult than your 360 topsoul, but you looked like a mess landing the porn. Again, this is where judges get into fights, we each have our preference and want our favorites to do well.
Falling will hurt your score, but not keep you out of the finals. There's a lot of confusion here, and skaters usually bring up the most complaints over this issue. A fall can hurt your score by as much as 10 pts, in my judging criteria. I say "as much as" because it's not a hard and true number. If you fall doing something stupid, like a soul on coping, I'll take the full 10. If you're trying something huge, like a gap to soul over a blind hip, you'll probably get a wash based on how close you get to landing it. There's a fine line between what you know you can pull, and what you think you can pull. We can to see you dance along that line.
Prelims vs. Finals
It's very important to distinguish between your prelim runs and the finals. The goal in the prelims is to make it to the finals, not win the comp. In most competitions, the prelim run scores are averaged to determine your prelim score. So, if your first run is a 66 and your second run is a 70, your average score for the prelims is 68. However, if your first run is a 70, and your second run is a 40 because you fell all over the place, your average is a 55. A 55 won't get you in the finals.
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Prelim runs should be consistent, and get progressively better from your first to second. We'll notice that you're improving from run to run and if you try some hard stuff, we'll be more inclined to push you in the finals cause we want to see if you can pull it off. Remember, our job to to put together the best show for the finals. If we think you have some big tricks you're saving, we'll want to see them.
In the finals, I always recommend playing it safe in your first run, but going for broke on your second. This all depends on the scoring policy for the event. If it's a combined average of both runs, put two good runs together. If it's best of two runs, get a good score in your first, then go balls out in your second. There's nothing worse than reaching the finals and ending up with two 30's because you couldn't land anything.
Wrapping it All Together
I hope you learned a thing or two about how competitions work. Remember it's been a while since I judged a comp, so some of these tips might not be as applicable as they once were. The general theme remains the same though; skate early in the day, be consistent with your skating and show improvement from run to run. I guarantee your scores will improve.
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