In a 48 hours of skateboarding action bookended by rain, yesterday’s Women’s Quarterfinals rolled over into Friday morning, as indeed Men’s Semifinals had to roll over into Saturday later that day.

Women’s Semifinals began with an early indication of how unpredictable proceedings had been up to then in the fact that perennial podium fixture Kokona Hiraki was starting in 15th place.

She looked mightily relieved to get her first run under her belt from that unusual position.

Dropping in after her and looking equally apprehensive was Spain’s mercurial Naia Laso, who opened her account with the big Backside 360 over the jumpbox which had defied her in the Quarterfinals and, like Kokona, she was delighted to get a full run under her belt to open her Semifinals account.

In Heat 1, only Australia’s Coco Crafter and Brazil’s Nanda Tonissi were unable to set out their stalls with opening runs- Coco made amends with her second, but Fernanda needed her last one to get herself up and running.

By the time Heat 1 drew to a close, everyone save Coco had breached the 70-point mark, but only Kokona had breached the 80’s- her 86.75 gave her the strongest chance from her heat of withstanding the assault of a Heat 2 which featured several different faces from those who we have seen at this stage in previous WST stops.

Dropping in first in Heat 2 was 14-year-old Yi-Fan ‘Yvonne’ Lin from Chinese Taipei, possessor of the best Sugarcane this side of Chris Miller- who put down a heater of a first run to set the tempo for the second phase.

She was followed by Californian ATV Minna Stess who has shown a composure across this week here in Paraguay that we hadn’t always seen before on the Tour up until now.

She has looked poised and assured throughout, even when things occasionally didn’t go to plan.

Sky Brown uncharacteristically fluffed her opening trick after only completing quarterfinals qualification on the morning of Semis, and Heili Sirvio took a heavy slam almost immediately after which created a ripple of uncertainty in the proceedings- Lillian Erickson, Mizuho Hasegawa and Minna all got the yips on their following runs, which left everything wide open half way through these Semifinals.

It took Sky’s second run to get her into finals contention and re-establish some competitive tempo: 2024 World Champion Raicca Ventura took the baton straight after Sky to put her own foot to the floor with a run which bounced her from 13th into 5th spot momentarily, before Mizuho Hasegawa managed to produce her by-now-expected magic during what has been an uncharacteristically patchwork performance for her so far this week- and barged her way into second place.

Sky Brown then did Sky Brown things by producing her best run by some distance just when she needed to and climbed into third, which invited Raicca Ventura to likewise raise her game right after- and she did likewise, moving up into fourth consequently.

Lying in eighth and watching all this through her fingers as previous finalists Finland’s Heili Sirvio and USA’s Lillian Erickson took their last rolls of the dice was Yi-Fan Lin, who has never made a World Skateboarding Tour finals before.

When Heili’s full run came up short and Lillian slipped out, Yi-Fan was safe- but Mizuho still had one last surprise up her sleeve, and used the final run of the day to regain her pole position in a declaration of intent.

Friday evening’s Men’s Semifinals began among fading light and ominous skies, with Italy’s Ale Mazzara producing a hairball first run to put the baseline for victory north of 87 points, before the Brazilian duo of Gui Khury and Augusto Akio responded with two 90-plus scorchers of their own.

Before we had made it through the first runs of Heat 1, there was already a benchmark of 93 points to beat for first place- which had the effect of galvanising the following pack into upping their games straight out of the gate.

By the time Ale was ready to try and clean up his wild opening run on his second go-around, Mother Nature decided to intervene as a sprinkling of rain decided to make an appearance and that momentary intervention was enough to upset his rhythm as he stepped off the Alley Oop Backside Ollie to fakie 50-50 on the sub-box, which he had made every single time up to then.

That left the door open for human lightning bolt Issei Sakurai to pick up where he left off in Rome last June with a full-throttle rocket-ride into the top end of the rankings with the third 90+ score of the evening thus far- which was enough to see him progress to Finals in 6th place.

With nothing to lose and a single card left to play, Florianopolis legend Kalani Konig found his own fifth gear and delivered the run he had threatened to right at the 11th hour- and suddenly we had another score above the 92 mark before Heat 1 was wrapped.

Suddenly the question was posed- could we end up with a ‘bubble’ score to progress into the finals which lay in the 90’s for the first time on the World Skateboarding Tour?

Augusto Akio’s buttery final run added an all-time top 10 score- putting up 94 for the (temporary) lead- which he held onto as Heat 1 gave way to Heat 2 and what promised to be a Battle Royale to unseat four skateboarders all sitting on scores in the 90’s in order to progress into finals.

With markers like that put down in what theoretically should be the less demanding heat, everybody in Heat 2 had to come out swinging, and that weight of pressure saw Tom Martin and Luke Kahler both stack their opening tricks and it took Tom Schaar’s opening run at the bottom of Heat 2 to get that heat’s first 90-plus score on the board.

Straight after him came Tate Carew back to his very best and with a 95 score of his own- the 3rd-highest score ever on the WST- to bump himself straight into the lead.

Australian Olympic double gold-medallist Keegan Palmer found himself initially having to hold off Sweden’s Hampus Winberg  and France’s Tom Martin for 8th place despite having posted an 88.52 with his opening run, as the scores amongst the top 8 continued to bump up courtesy of Tom Schaar’s second ballistic run for 93.48.

With Egoitz Bijueska already sitting on 94.5 from his opening run and unable to add to that on his second, France’s Tom Martin came from way off the pace to pull a 90 of his own and unseat Keegan Palmer from finals contention by taking that 8th-place spot just as the skies opened once more at an unbelievably tense juncture in proceedings close to the top of the order on Run number 3.

After an abortive attempt to restart, a collective decision was taken to restart on Saturday morning before Finals with seven runs still to go. Come the morning, it was only Hampus Winberg and Egoitz Bijueska who were able to complete their last runs, neither of which had any meaningful impact on the final standings- and so the leaderboard remained as it stood at the end of  those second runs.

We should extend particular congratulations to France’s Tom Martin, who had to endure what may well have been the longest night of his young life sitting on the bubble spot before being confirmed as going through to his first-ever finals on the World Skateboarding Tour today.