GSD 2010 Cairo Recap

Hi everyone,

Fayek Helmi says, “who cares about an organized event on 1 certain day a year? will it make a difference if same event was held on a completely different day? no. just go out and skate. even if you skate your own garage. the whole point of skate day is to not let anything hold you back from skating. just go skate. period.”

Go Skateboarding Day (GSD) is like a feast for skaters all over the world. On the 21st of June each year, every skater skates this day and rolls on the streets. Skaters may also celebrate this day by organizing competitions and filming or taking photos all day long. So, if you’re a skater what are you waiting for? Go grab your board and skate.

Unluckily, “Oasis Park” the place chosen for the GSD had some problems due to the World Cup. Then, the only solution was to go to Cairo (we alexandria skaters) to meet other skaters and enjoy the day.

We took a Microbus to cairo, had a small stop in “Omar Oasis”.

This is how the day began. First, we arrived at Nozha Spot. We opened the bus’ door, it was like you have opened the oven. It was 48 C degrees out there.
“The Camera is burning me in my hands”, Cherif Herrawi said.

We took our skateboards and started our day. We warmed up, skated the Double-Set, and jaws started dropping off. Karim Alexander, Yassin Koptan (bling), Brandon Maddox and Oozy (Mahmoud Tarek). those were the impressive skaters of the day. As Alex had nailed a 360 flip, Hardflip and he almost landed the double flip off the double-set.. Those were totally impressive.. Yassin had the eye on by his highly tweaked kickflip and F/S flip, although he had some injuries but he got what he wanted at the end. The OldSchool skater Brandon did some sick stuff too, such as pressure indies and other Oldschool tricks.

Now if you ask me about the skater of the day, I would vote for Oozy. That dude is improving very quickly and does really professional stuff. The Best trick of the day was the Nollie Heelflip landed by Oozy perfectly clean on the Nozha Double-set.. That was totally awesome, no one believed it, but you can’t contradict the reality.

At about four o’clock, we went by bus to the Airport spot to meet the cairo skaters. There were many of them, skaters quit skating and others take place.. But there are the main original symbols of the Cairo skate scene such as : Yehia Ossama, Hilali, Fayek Helmi, Alexandre Shehata and others. We first played on a wedge ramp that belongs to some Inline skaters (Ihab Omar, thanks alot for bringing it). It was cool at the beginning, everyone skated on it, Tommasso Tournet did some highly incredible tricks on it such as Tre-Flip and backside Heel. Also, Yassin did a very high kickflip on that wedge which I personally liked a lot. Unfortunately, this wedge ramp has like a paint that melted due to the high temperature, So wheels started sticking into it and began make some trouble. Another skate part was Cherif’s Yellow rail, it was good and many skated it, but the most memorable trick was Oozy’s kickflip F/S boardslide.

After a while, competitions started by the Highest Ollie. We were like 10 skaters who signed their names in that competition. Skaters started getting knocked out gradually after putting 3 decks. Only five skaters who have ollied the 5 decks which were :  Yassin Koptan, Amin Rida and Mike Issa, Oozy and K.Alexander. For the first three skaters, that was there maximum ollie height, but Alex and Oozy kept the challenge on. The final score was that Oozy got the 7 decks but Alex regrettably got only 6. Oozy won.

The second competition was a normal GAME OF SKATE with the same original rules. It was a fairly judged game. But for the second time again, Oozy won the Advanced Game Of Skate. Oozy was given prizes worth EGP1000 of Cliche deck, DVD, Shoe Goo, Wax, some stickers and patches which he really deserved.

Well, that was the end of everything, we then headed back to Alexandria to our lovely homes. Everything went fine and really good. Thanks for Skateimpact.com and Herrawi Bros’ great work to make us spend a really joyful day full of our favorite game SKATEBOARDING. We would like to thank also Mahmoud Bakr, Bassel Ezzat and Aly Rashwan and their cameras for taking snapshots for the skating day along with Cherif and Omar, and everyone who had came and helped.

We hope you have enjoyed your day. And we promise you of another happy surprises soon.

Amin Rida