Abbie Burns and Beau Brunclair claim the victory in the Lanzarote Rookie Fest

39 young skaters from 9 different countries kickstarted the skateboarding season in Lanzarote for the first-ever Lanzarote Rookie Fest

This weekend, the Extreme Center in Lanzarote hosted the first skateboarding Rookie Fest of the season and the first World Rookie Tour event ever in Spain. A few dozen skaters of all ages and from 9 different countries participated in a contest that they will remember for a long time.

On Friday, the skaters enjoyed a long open session training in the newly refurbished indoor skatepark surrounded by palm trees. For the first few hours, the young skaters had quite serious faces and focused on discovering and practising their lines. But soon enough they started to meet new friends and the session continued well into the night, having a first day of 12 hours non-stop skateboarding.

On Saturday, with the seats filled with supportive parents, enthusiastic friends, and fellow skaters, tension rose right before the qualification started. However, once the skaters’ names were called to start their run, an explosion of enjoyment and excitement was on their faces.

The youngest competitor was only 5 years old, and many participants were under 10, which made it possibly the event with the youngest average age of participants in the history of the World Rookie Tour!
But fear not, because age is just a number, and they all displayed great talent and skills.

With 11 girls participating, only 4 made it through finals, and what a final! The British and Lanzarote local Abbie Burns earned the victory against Spanish favourite Noa Gonzalez, who unfortunately couldn’t land her run and ended up 4th. Slovenian Lina Sevčnikar claimed a well-deserved second place after showing her solid skills throughout the weekend and pushing through the final. Finally, the Canarian ramp rider Paula Jorge Simón surprised everyone by putting together a very complete run in this street park: “At first I wasn’t sure what I was doing here, as I normally skate ramp and street is not my strength, but I took it as an opportunity to try something new. I guess it’s an experience that can only be good for me. I’m just very happy I was able to put a run down and I wasn’t expecting much, so I am very happy.”

Abbie’s winning run was a rainfall of solid tricks with a frontside smith on the flat bar, a backside boardslide and a front board on the big rail, a kickflip down the euro gap, a backside 5050, a nosegrind, a kickflip over the pyramid and a kickflip frontside boardslide on the flat bar.

The boys’ finals were extraordinary to witness. The 8 highly skilled young skaters amused the crowd and each other by raising the bar one trick at a time. They transformed their nerves into flips and delivered an intense, banger-filled final.

Belgian Beau Brunclair won the big prize with an incredible display of style and technique delivered impeccably. His run consisted of a gap backside nose blunt slide, a backside 180 nosegrind revert, a 3flip and a kickflip over the pyramid, a big spin frontside boardslide, a frontside lipslide, a backside 270 lipslide on the big rail, a frontside 5-0, a big spin kickflip, and a frontside boardslide on the big rail as the last trick attempt.

His Belgian fellow, Noah de Jagger, delivered an exciting show and fought hard to keep his second place, but he couldn’t beat the young Spanish skater Luis Cabarcos. In the end, Luis Cabarcos earned second place, leaving Noah third.