Monster Energy’s Tom Schaar Takes Third Place in Skateboard Park at Air + Style in Los Angeles
(PRWEB) March 05, 2018 -- Monster Energy congratulates Tom Schaar on taking third place in Skateboard Park at the annual Air + Style action sports and music festival in Los Angeles on Sunday night. The first-ever skateboarding competition at Air + Style Los Angeles saw Schaar battling some of the world’s best park skateboarders – including riders from Australia, Brazil, Sweden, and the United States – on a custom-built concrete course at Expo Park. In a high-energy final under festival spotlights, the 18-year-old from Malibu, California, proved his versatile riding skills after taking second place in Saturday’s Best Trick event.
Air + Style started in 1994 as a pure-play snowboard competition in Innsbruck, Austria, focused on big aerial stunts. Over the years, the stadium event has grown into a global series that blends live music, action sports, art, and culture. In 2015, Air + Style made its North American debut in Los Angeles curated by pro snowboarder and Olympic gold medalist Shaun White. For this year’s edition, White drew on his own skate background to add Skateboard Park into the festival line-up, next to musical acts including Phoenix, Zedd and Gucci Mane as well as a snowboard “street” event.
Located in the center of the open-air festival, the Skateboard Park course was far from a standard contest set-up. Instead of a conventional bowl design, the concrete course blended vertical pool corners with street-style wallrides, handrails, pyramids, ledges, and gaps – all built at a burly scale that called for speed and technical riding skills.
No stranger to technical skateboarding, Schaar brought a diverse bag of tricks and high speed lines to the Air + Style course. Today’s semifinals standouts included huge alley-oop backside ollies over the door gap, frontside ollie blunt on the vertical quarterpipe, ollie out to frontside pivot pop-in fakie on the bank to vertical pillar, frontside feeble grind in the bowl corner, and frontside lipslide transfer onto the high quarterpipe. In the ultra-competitive finals, Schaar raised the bar with a high-flying tuck knee Indy air and ollie to frontside tailslide on the bank to pillar, but had difficulty landing an alley-oop kickflip Indy air. Posting an 86.6 point final score, Schaar made the podium in third place with CJ Collins in second and Heimana Reynolds in first.
Schaar just turned pro for Element Skateboards in February 2018 and has been a top contender at park skateboarding and big air competitions from a young age. When he was 12, he made history as the first skateboarder to land a 1080 aerial and began competing in the X Games that same year. He has since evolved from rookie to podium regular in events such as Vans Park Series (VPS), where he finished his 2017 season as the highest-scoring rider in tour rankings after placing third in the VPS Men's World Championships in Shanghai. Also in 2017, Schaar won the Vans Pool Party contest in Orange for the second time and became the first X Games athlete to win medals in both Big Air and Skate Park events at X Games Minneapolis.
Also making a strong showing at Air + Style, Schaar’s Monster Energy teammate Lizzie Armanto from Santa Monica held her own competing in the same division as the men in today’s event. Freshly returned from a promotional tour for women’s skateboarding in India, the 25-year-old from Santa Monica, California, covered the course with a frontside air over the door gap, frontside tailslide on the tall bank, lien to tail and backside crossbone air on the vert corner.
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Now that Air + Style is in the books, look forward to Armanto, Schaar, Trey Wood, and the rest of the Monster Energy skateboard team this year in the global Vans Skatepark Series, as well as the X Games and other park riding events. Visit http://www.monsterenergy.com and follow Monster Energy on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter for exclusive updates.
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About Monster Energy
Based in Corona, California, Monster Energy is the leading marketer and distributor of energy drinks and alternative beverages. Refusing to acknowledge the traditional, Monster Energy supports the scene and sport. Whether motocross, off-road, NASCAR, MMA, BMX, surf, snowboard, ski, skateboard, or the rock and roll lifestyle, Monster Energy is a brand that believes in authenticity and the core of what its sports, athletes and musicians represent. More than a drink, it’s the way of life lived by athletes, sports, bands, believers and fans. See more about Monster Energy including all of its drinks at http://www.monsterenergy.com.
Kim Dresser, Indie Agency Inc., http://www.indiepragency.com, +1 (949) 300-5546, [email protected]
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