Craig Cunningham: July 2012

July 12'th I took off to Hood River Oregon for a few weeks to participate in the Kiteboard 4 Cancer charity event, the Slider Projects - Ro Sham Throwdown (one of two major park/wakestyle events) as well as explore the area and do some stuff with the Liquid Force crew.

I had been wanting to check this place out ever since I started kiteboarding and was pretty excited to finally roll into "the hood!" The trip didn't necessarily go the way I planned it but I still managed to get some good results, see some beautiful scenery, ride everyday (except the day after the closing Ro Sham party ha) and do a bunch of mountain biking!

Sooooo, I arrived late and the next day Kiteboarding 4 Cancer was kicking off. So it was straight to the event site to meet up with our crew. The LF Team consisted of Brandon Scheid, Colleen Carroll, Dave Grove and myself. We ended up in 2'nd Overall with a total of 34 laps for the main portion of the event! The team were happy with that and I'm pretty sure I heard Tonia Farman the organizer of the event say we had raised well over $60, 000!!! Really proud of the kiteboarding community for coming together and raising such a large amount of funds to send cancer survivors to camp! Well done.

Right after KB4C the Ro Sham Throwdown was set to go down! This event along with SSS are really pushing the park/wakestyle side of things in kiteboarding! 30+ of the best riders in the world came out to run heats and see who had the most steeze in the park (photos below) which included the Liquid Force Dancefloor, Slingshot Kicker, Airush Funbox and the Best Box/Single Barrel Gap along with Joby's Pole! I was really worried about just making it through my first 8 man heat with a bunch of really solid riders but ended up being first to advance through after day 1. The next day I got to sit out and watch as I was now pre seeded into the Semi Finals!

In the semis I had another pretty heavy heat with Sam Light, Rich Sabo, Jason Slezak and Jake Kelsick... but managed to lay down a solid run with a mobe, shifty 313, switch toe front 5 and some decent slider hits. I guess I did enough to make it into the 6 man finals!

The finals were going to be super tough with Sam Light, Brandon Scheid, Eric Rienstra, Sam Medysky, Alex Fox and myself going for it. I was just stoked to be in a heat with these guys, even though were all friends, these guys have really been killing it these past few years. I was up first and my run went pretty much perfect minus my gap hit from the up-box to the single barrel hand rail. I managed to get off a a nice combo hit on the LF dancefloor, another switch toe 5 off the kicker, another backmobe, a big shifty 315 and a Stale S-Mobe. The other boys were throwing down hard though and not making it easy for anyone. At the end of it all Sam Light (Naish) ended up in 1'st, Brandon Schied (LF) in 2'nd and Alex Fox( Slingshot) rounded out the podium with the 3'rd place finish. I ended up in 4'th which I am really happy about considering the level of riders and all the big names at the event!

And also congrats to the girls 1'st Colleen Carroll (LF), 2'nd Laura Maher (Slingshot) and 3'rd Sensi Graves (LF)!

Thanks to Joby, Forrest, Katie, "the Spit crew" and everybody else at the Slider Project who made this event possible! Thanks to the local crew and all my friends for the hospitality and warm welcome! And thanks to Jim Stringfellow for the majority of these photos! Can't wait to come back to the Hood next year...

Keep your eyes peeled for lots of media to come out of this event in the coming months! But for now check out the first edit to come out of the event...