Three thousand fans packed Austrian capital Vienna’s Arena Wien on Friday night to watch 21 of the world’s best freerunners quite literally climb the walls for Red Bull Art of Motion.
In a breathtaking show of daredevil gravity-defiance and pure acrobatic skill, and with the huge crowd pushing the best on the planet right to the limit, athletes from across the world flipped, tricked and spun their way over, under and across the obstacles scattered across the urban playground.
The Austrian capital offered the perfect terrain for the top athletes to demonstrate courage and skills more often seen on the sets of big-budget movies: backflips, frontflips, double-flips and devil drops were the order of the day in the arena as the athletes took to the sky before returning to earth to flip and trick their way over walls, fences, railings and cars.
In qualifying, each athlete had 90 seconds to showcase his skills, with the top eight through to the final and with a chance to impress the members of a star-studded panel comprising Gaetan Bouillet, Victor ‘Showtime’ Lopez, Austrian local hero Patrick Morawetz and Paul ‘EZ’ Corkery, who had the unenviable task of judging the moves according to creativity, difficulty, style and safety.
'This was my first big event, but definitely not my last!' – Pamela Obiniana
When all was said and done, it was Jason Paul from Germany who received the gleaming winner’s cup, followed by Yoann Leroux (FRA) in second place and Pavel Petkuns (LTV) in third, with the Latvian also receiving the Best Trick Award.
“The atmosphere was just incredible,” said Austrian Lukas Steiner, who came fourth overall. “The fans really fired us up and pushed each and every one of us to show some really world-class freerunning. It is a real honour for me to get fourth place in front of my home crowd.”
Among the ladies, Pamela Obiniana left the fans in no doubt whatsoever that freerunning is not just for the guys by flipping and tricking her way through the arena together with Hollywood stuntwoman Lucy Romberg.
“This was my first big event, but definitely not my last!” said Obiniana. “It was great fun being out there and mixing it with the guys.”
Learn more Cold Hard Facts about Red Bull Art of Motion here
Comments
Add a comment