The Playground category showcases not only the athlete, but the landscapes, locations, platforms and environments in which they play. The reputation of Lorenz Holder as one of the greatest ever location scouts continues with this unique image taken at the Ouse Valley Viaduct, that would look equally as good hung in a gallery as it would on the cover of a skateboard magazine!
“The Ouse Valley Viaduct is pretty cool old railway bridge in the South of England. When you approach it from the side, you can‘t really see the secret this bridge has to offer, but once you get underneath of one of the arches you can‘t believe your eyes. You are caught in a place that could easily be in the movie Inception. The arches create a very surreal visual effect – when you are taking a picture, you don‘t understand if you are looking down into something or at least you get very confused about what you‘re actually seeing. I was blown away by this fact, but also blown away that this looked like a pretty good spot for skateboarding.
“When I showed Vladic an image of the viaduct, he was on fire to try it out. To be honest it was super hard to ride and Vladic‘s quote that got stuck in my mind was: “This is so hard, when my brain is going down in the transition, my body is already going up again – this will be difficult to get something done here.“ A couple of hours later, when his brain and body came together, he landed this kickflip while the sun was just at the perfect angle as well.”
Lorenz beat other finalists Chris Tedesco, Kamil Sustiak, Geoff Coombs, Matt Georges and Andrius Aleksandravičius to win his second category of the night!
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