Quarterfinal stage here at WST Park World Championship 2023 in Ostia, Italy, sees the top 32 in each division cut down to 16. The best 27 qualifiers joined the top 5 pre-seeds (according to current OWSR rankings), meaning the standard goes up quickly- something reflected in the cut-off score rising from 65 for men/ 68 for women in the qualifiers, to 74 for men/ 77 for the women here tonight.
Ph: Landi
Other changes which add to the intensity of the action are the change from best run of 2 to best of 3, and the fact that each 45 second run is now effectively sudden death- meaning that if you fall, your run is done. The addition of a third run at this juncture has proven really beneficial, since almost every skater has blown out at least one run; only Jagger Eaton and local hero Alessandro Mazzara posted 3 full runs each above the 70-mark in the male division, while only Kokona Hiraki and Hinano Kusaki did likewise for the females.
Ph: Landi
Add to that the fact that the crowd have figured out that stamping your feet in the stands turns the underside into an amplifier, and that our (newly-beardless) DJ Redbeard is playing more power chords- and everything becomes just a bit more blood-curdling. Narrowly missing out on skating tomorrow but who nonetheless left it all out there on the course were Liam Pace, Tyler Edtmayer and Portugal’s impressive Thomas Augusto for men, and the mightily-impressive Finnish 12-year old Heili Sirvio and a very solid Jordyn Barratt who seemed to shrug off a clavicle pain from yesterday to put in three runs of 65+ but still- only just- lost out on progressing.
At the good news end of the leaderboards, a resurgent Pedro Barros knocked first-place qualifier Yuro Nagahara down into second position with a crowd- rousing couple of runs, and Kokona Hiraki pipped the super-powerful Raicca Ventura with the last run of the day to go into tomorrow in pole position for the women.
Sky Brown, incidentally, is not competing having done herself a misfortune before the contest started. We wish her all the best in her recovery and look forward to seeing her back in action soon!