Yall can prove me wrong but I think Gavin deserved to take the 1st place. I understand that Trent's tricks were difficult and it gets more points. But, if you see the whole last run of Trent's, he zeached on 4 obstacles. Especially the last 3 obstacles were wtf carnival with obstacle-hand touching trying to hold himself to not to fall. If you compare with other board sports, for me the obstacle-hand touching is like the same as you would do a fakie kickflip on the skateboard and you revert in the end cause you couldn't hold yourself on the skateboard properly. Gavin's run wasn't with difficult "signature" tricks as Trent's has done in this competition. But almost every trick of Gavin's was more stylish and more clean. No hate and no hard feelings on anybody. Just nowadays I see everyone are afraid to express their opinions in wakeboard community publicly of what they think. The "beasts" in wakeboarding, who comes with big luggage of impressive wakeboarding tricks and wins every contest in a row, somehow upgrades to a certain level of "untouchability" where other people are p*ssies to talk and express their opinions about what they think. People in wakeboarding community just rather to go behind the back, talk shit about every rider and act nice later in front of every eyes. Just fckin grow up. Otherwise wakeboarding will just degrade more and more. Again, no hard feelings, just opinion of what I see :)
I agree that it seems like people don’t want to speak up when they have true constructive criticism about runs. I think a big thing in other sports that draws attention and gets people talking is honest debates and breakdowns of contest runs. In this case though, it had to be a pretty hard decision! Gavin’s kicker hit was pretty high level and we’ve seen Pete 7s from Tom even years ago, but Gavin’s last couple rail hits at the end I think just weren’t quite enough. I would score both of their air tricks pretty close, even with Trent doing a pretty unique one. I can do both those tricks fairly similarly, and I think the opposite body rotation as well as the handle pass on the front mobe can be a bit harder to make consistent. I would have liked to see Trent’s little mummy wrap nose tap thing a bit cleaner on the last run, but I still think that beats Gavin’s creeper ledge hit either way. And the Crail frontroll with back 270 beats Crail tantrum stoping at backlip especially since they both had a little hand drag. Like you said though, absolutely wild riding and no hate for anyone. I think these kinds of discussions are fun as long as people don’t bring bias or favoritism into it 👌🏼
Keep in mind judges aren’t watching drone angles. Easily best judges in the sport. Entitled to your opinion, but there is a reason those judges are up there.
