Lockdown Game Of SKATE: Update 2

Week 2 of the Lockdown Game Of SKATE has come to a close, and things have heated up considerably. At the end of last week, most people were still in the game, with a fair few competitors sitting on S, or no letters whatsoever. What a difference a week makes: 9 people are gone, with only 6 remaining, and some serious bangers coming out of the woodwork to catch people out.

Week 2 Breakdown

1. Set number 7 came courtesy of Ryan Stanway (rjes), with a fairly reserved Fakie Kickflip. Ryan took the gentlemanly approach and set something reasonable after Freddy’s Switch Flip and Kerr’s FS Bigspin caused some serious upset.
2. If Stanway was trying to send a message to the other competitors to calm their shit down, Ryan Bradley (ryanbradley_1) wasn’t listening. He busted out the first and only clean sweep of the comp to date with a Pressure Flip. Needless to say, this caused the biggest shake-up of the comp, stopping Ryan Stanway and Ellian Lisica (ellian_ever_after) from finishing the comp with no letters, and knocking many others out of the comp for good. Quinn (q_la_skate) valiantly tried this trick all day despite having never landed it, and actually learnt to flip the thing – even though, Q was knocked out after this trick.
3. Next, Sam Crow (spirephotography_) dropped a Double Kickflip. Again, this caught a lot of people out, and was the point where betting man’s favourite Lucas Healey (lucashealey) started to crack. This one knocked Freddy Hackett (_megafred) out of the comp – he cited a bad back and being in his 30′s as the reason he couldn’t do the trick anymore.
4. Jack Taylor’s (jack98taylor) Nollie FS 360 in a school playground was so textbook that I thought the footage had dropped straight out of a Girl/Chocolate video. This was quite a leftfield set: it’s fairly reasonable for people to learn this in 24 hours, but it’s not an obvious trick. For those who know how to do it, it comes naturally, as proven by Ellian Lisica and his similarly textbook example.
5. After patiently waiting for literally everyone else to set, and clawing his way through a gruelling 11 tricks, Josh Williams (townratjosh) finally got his chance to set – with a Varial Heelflip. This was the trick that knocked Lucas Healey out of the comp, but at this point a lot of these tricks were seemingly aiming at the top of the leaderboard, as people grasped for sets that would give Ryan’s Bradley and Stanway, or Ellian, a letter.
6. The last person to set in our original line up was Ellian Lisica – who subverted expectation to set a No Comply FS 360. In general this was a tricky set designed to catch others at the top of the leaderboard out. Ryan Stanway and Ryan Bradley both picked up letters on this one (although Stanway got close with an attempt I called as a redo – he had tried it for ages with no luck so just forfeited). Similarly Josh also got close to this one, it was a trick that was just out of reach for a few people in the comp.
7. We wrapped back around to the start, with Charlie Kerr (mrmojorisin23) as the first person on the setlist who is still in. Final trick covered in this update is a Fakie FS Bigspin, with Kerr trying to catch people off guard again with yet another bigspin variation. Unfortunately it wasn’t as effective as his regular variant, with every other competitor landing the trick this time!

Next trick is back to Ryan Stanway again, with a Fakie Varial Heelflip. With Kerr and Josh on the verge of going out, this could be a big upset. Similarly to when we had a Fakie Kickflip (also from Stanway), the regular version of this trick has already been set, and so the Fakie Varial Heel attempts must be rolling. This is a tactic which might catch some people out.

If the Fakie Varial Heel does some damage, we could be heading into the end game for this whole thing. It’s heating up now!