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Paganello 2007 – Day One

2007 Paganello
Rimini, Italy
April 6, 2007

Open Pairs Prelim A
(top 2 advance to the semifinals)

1. Tom Leitner/Reto Zimmerman (67.1)
2. Alex Alexandrov/Gary Auerbach (56.2)
3. Andrea Poli/Riacardo Sanna (56.0)
4. Sergio Arrighi/Bianca Strunz (50.8)
5. Markus Goetz/Eleonora Imazio (50.7)
6. Markus Hein/Zahlen Titcomb (37.1)
7. Urs Hardegger/Niki Thoma (35.9)

Open Pairs Prelim B
(top 2 advance to the semifinals)

1. Larry Imperiale/Fabio Sanna (65.1)
2. Matteo Gaddoni/Jan Schreck (57.9)
3. Claudio Massaro/Andrea Rimatori (57.2)
4. Matteo Feller/Paolo Magni (53.0)
5. Ramon Galliani/Carlo Perrone (48.3)
6. AlÈ Collera/Xtehn Titcomb (44.7)
7. Jan Huybrechts/Hans Peeters (34.6)

Open Pairs Prelim C
(top 2 advance to the semifinals)

1. Paul Kenny/Pipo Lopez (69.5)
2. Manuel Cesari/Arthur Coddington (61.9)
3. Giavanni Coppo/Valerio Occorsio (59.4)
4. Steve Hays/Neil Toland (52.5)
5. Angelo Mancarella/Danilo Torzolini (52.2)
6. Cristina Nicolardi/Davide “Panda” (43.9)
7. Gloria Alessandrini/Davide Bacco

Open Pairs Prelim D
(top 2 advance to the semifinals)

1. Antonio Piccione Cusmá/Andrea Meola (61.9)
2. Joakim Arveskär/Clay Collera (60.9)
3. Claudio Cigna/Luca Medri (60.6)
4. Fabio Caruso/Silvia Caruso (57.3)
5. John Titcomb/Marco Prati (43.2)
6. Alessandro Berra/Matteo Ceresa (39.3)

Open Pairs B Final
(Top 2 advance to the semifinals)

1. Matteo Feller/Paolo Magni (65.1)
2. Angelo Mancarella/Danilo Torzolini (63.7)
3. Steve Hays/Neil Toland (59.7)
4. Fabio Caruso/Silvia Caruso (58.8)
5. Sergio Arrighi/Bianca Strunz (58.7)
6. Markus Goetz/Eleonora Imazio (53.3)
7. Ramon Galliani/Carlo Perrone (51.5)
8. John Titcomb/Marco Prati (51.1)
9. Jan Huybrechts/Hans Peeters (50.9)
10. Markus Hein/Zahlen Titcomb (49.2)
11. Alessandro Berra/Matteo Ceresa (46.4)
12. AlÈ Collera/Xtehn Titcomb (45.9)
13. Cristina Nicolardi/Davide “Panda” (44.5)
14. Urs Hardegger/Niki Thoma (44.2)
15. Gloria Alessandrini/Davide Bacco (36.3)

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Paganello 2007 Begins

Paganello 2007 got underway today with endless jamming under sunny skies followed by a ginormous opening party. Looks like there will be almost 60 freestylers in the competition. Unfortunately, Filippo Cavalca won’t be among them as he hurt his shoulder just yesterday. We wish him a quick recovery – we will miss you Filippo! Most turbo so far this week is Alex Alexandrov, who jammed for 3+ hours in the rain and soft sand yesterday, then followed it up with about 6 hours today. He was still jamming tonight at the party.

Tonight’s opening party had wine, pasta, freshly-caught fish, belly dancers, a medieval drama performed on stilts, a live band and fireworks. Those who wake up in time for the 10:30 players meeting tomorrow will play the Open Pairs prelim. 12 teams will advance to the semis from the 24+ teams entered, then the rest will have a playoff for two more spots.

Now it is time for me to sleep, so my old legs can make it through a three minute prelim round tomorrow. Buona notte.

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Video: 1998 FPAW – Almost Dropless


Murf and Ted were on fire at the FPAW1998 in Seattle, winning the finals with a performance that was called Routine of the Decade. Their tournament began with this prelims performance. Dropless with huge closing catches (almost) all the way through.

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Video: 1998 FPAW Co-op Champions Demo

Many people have asked about this performance. It became a tradition when Seattle hosted the FPA Worlds to have the champions do a demo performance at the end of the competition. In 1998, Dave Murphy, Dave Lewis and I won the co-op title by a hair over Randy Silvey, Larry Imperiale and Bill Wright so we were invited to do the demo.

I was especially happy about it because I didn’t feel we put our best performance down in the finals. It was quiet, without the amplitude and fire from our practices. The demo was an opportunity to go for it, to show the kind of runthroughs we did when it was just Dave, Dave and Arthur practicing in Santa Monica.

1998 was the year Dave Murphy swept the open titles, also winning Pairs with Ted Oberhaus in a legendary performance that won Routine of the Decade. Maybe it was Murf coming down after a weekend of impeccable play. Maybe it was a fluke, but in between a lot of incredible moves, Murf missed several of his money moves, to the point where it became comical.

One of the reasons people have asked about this routine is a move I did. Yes, this is “the routine where Arthur does the quad crow.” But really, there are a lot of other moments in this five minutes, from Murf’s clean standing gitis pull to his indig take off my flamingo skid to Dave’s double spinning utl pull on a second disc to his double spinning gitis off Murf’s brush set and a rare aerial bad attitude. Sometimes, you have to look away from the main action to see the biggest moves.

I hope you enjoy this video.

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Sick Moves: Supernova


Fabio sent me a video, innocently asking what I thought. He’s a sneaky bastard! He should have put a warning on the video: WARNING: MIGHT CAUSE HEART ATTACK. This move is about as cutting as the edge gets.

Double spinning barrel catches are hard. I’ve done a few myself, even though the catch currently labeled barrel doesn’t use the hand position of a pure barrel. It’s still hard. Double spinning barrel gitis? Harder. Dave Lewis somehow got consistent at them. I might have done one in my life.

Double spinning barrel gitis pull? I can’t say I’ve seen one. No, I’m sure I haven’t because if I had, it would have stopped me in my tracks. Now take that one step further. Double (thanks Jeff for the correction, “just” a single spin. I’m getting senile) spinning against the spin barrel gitis pull. That’s what Fabio does in this video, then he bails to a simple double spinning barrel gitis to close the combo. Way to play it safe!

I’ve never seen this move. Fabio would love to know if an other freestyler has ever done it. He would like to name it Supernova – and the double spinning barrel gitis pull would be a Nova. A lot of freestyle happened while I wasn’t looking, so if you’ve seen this move, let us know. I can imagine less than five freestylers in history who would be in a position to even think about doing this move. It’s that sick!

Here’s a bonus photo of Fabio doing one of those easy double spinning barrel gitis catches during his 2005 visit to the SF Bay Area:

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DiscTwirls

Jan Soerensen is looking for feedback on a direction of freestyle he’s been exploring, kind of an updated version of one of the earliest freestyle tricks, the twirl:

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2007 Wintershred AKA Alaskashred

Usually, Wintershred is played in balmy, summer weather because San Francisco’s climate is…well, I probably should set a good example and not use that kind of language on my own site. We have played Wintershreds in February with temperatures in the high 70’s. It looked like that would be the case this year, as the temperatures Friday reached the high 70’s and hit 80 in areas.
San Francisco is anything but predictable. Anyone who forgot to bring layers of clothes today was sunk. I threw on sweatpants and a fleece just in case, and even that wasn’t enough. When I arrived, the temperature might have been 50, with a borderline stiff breeze. It was…Alaskashred.

Continue reading “2007 Wintershred AKA Alaskashred”

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Shrednow Is YouTube-enabled

You can now share YouTube videos in Shrednow stories. I have adjusted our security settings to allow the embedded YouTube (and probably Google Video too) player. When you create a story that uses a YouTube video, just make sure to select “HTML Formatted” instead of “Plain Old Text”.

Here’s some footage Fabio and Eleonora put together from EFC 2006: