Mariah Duran Drops Hammers During Women’s Street Semi Final at Dew Tour Long Beach 2019

What began with a slow start and cool temperatures, ended with a heat wave of heavy hammers on the street course. An all new format the Women’s Street Semi Final brought out the best tricks seen so far from the ladies at Dew Tour Long Beach 2019.

The format used will be the official format for competition at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics Games. Beginning with two, 45-second runs, each athlete is allotted an addition five, single-trick attempts. Both runs and single tricks are scored out of 10 points possible, with the top four scores (run and/or single trick scores) added together to determine ranking.

The Semi Final was made up of 24 women from seven countries. The ladies were broken out into four heats of six, and only the top eight moved on to skate in the Final.

Right away the change in format revealed opportunity for high scores and hard tricks. Following the first set of timed runs, came the single-trick attempts and after the first set of five score had already dropped higher than any run yet.

Candy Jacobs earned her transfer spot into the Semi Final the day prior with a top finish in the Quarter Final, and she continued on with that momentum to become the first official woman to secure a spot in the final.

The best scores, though, came from the final heat of six women—of which only one did not earn a spot into the final. During the timed runs it was Leticia Bufoni with the highest score of the event after stomping a tailslide to fake on the 6-stair hubba, a back lipslide down the A-frame rail and 360 flip on the hip.

Lacey Baker had the second highest run score of the day with the help of some technical prowess in the form of a nose slide 270 out on a bump to ledge. During the single-trick section, though, she earned the second highest score in that category as well with a nose manual nollie heelflip out across the C-ledge on course. The stands erupted and her fellow competitors slapped their skateboards on the ground.

The best single-trick score of the event went to Mariah Duran, as did the top spot and highest overall score. Duran stomped both of her runs and then proceeded to up her score with heavy single-trick hammers like a kickflip front boardslide on the A-frame rail, a hard flip down the 6-stair and, her best scored trick, a front feeble grind down the Boost Mobile 8-stair rail.

“I like the format a lot,” said Duran moments after her heat came to a heated end. “I was having a really good skate day today, so I took full advantage of the format and tried some tricks I’d like to do again in the Final. It’s me versus my tricks.”

See if Duran takes all and wins the Women’s Street Final on Sunday at 11am PT on DewTour.com/LIVE.

Women’s Street Semi Final Results 

1.) Mariah Duran, USA 21.49
2.) Pamela Rosa, BRA 20.51
3.) Leticia Bufoni, BRA 19.56
4.) Lacey Baker, USA 18.96
5.) Aori Nishimura, JPN 17.93
6.) Yumeka Oda, JPN 17.61
7.) Candy Jacobs, NED 17.29
8.) Hayley Wilson, USA 17.19