Our 2018 Illawarra Mercury Tobin Family Award winner, Kieran Woolley, has had a terrific start to 2019. Kieran has been busy skating all around Australia and producing some of his biggest wins yet!
Athlete blog by Kieran Woolley (BlueScopeWIN Lonestar – Skateboarding)
I have had a fun start to the year: travelling, surfing, skating and competing. First up, I flew solo to Tasmania (my first trip to Tassie) to compete in the King of Concrete, Hobart. It was a lot of fun, cool people and a really sick bowl. I was stoked to win the Open Men’s and also pick up 2nd in Men’s Street against some great street skaters.
I flew from Hobart to Melbourne for the King of Concrete, Noble Park and spent the week with my family. The competition at Noble was HOT! Big comp, big bowl. After an exciting day of competition, I was hyped to take away 1st place in the Opens division.
Sunday was King of Vert at Prahran and while Vert isn’t really my thing, it is probably the only Australian Vert competition all year so why not have a go? The comp was cool and I came away with 3rd place on Vert and 1st on the Mini Ramp.
Up next I was skating at Bateau Bay getting ready for the King of Concrete. I got a few good lines down and was pretty hyped on how I was skating. Friday came very quickly and I felt like I was prepared. After rain on Saturday morning the comp got up and going pretty quickly and all the divisions were skating amazing well. I could not wait for the Open division as we had all the normal guys plus American, Bever Flemming from Nitro Circus competing.
When it was finally my time to skate, I got in there and just went as hard as I could. It was super exciting, everyone was pushing hard as this comp has the most prize money for 2019. I landed a solid “safe” run and my planned “hard” run but the competition was hot and I wasn’t sure that I’d done enough. With the pressure on in my last run I added some extra spice and was stoked to complete my run.
At the presentation, I was super hyped to place 1st in the Opens division and clock up my 4th Open Men’s win from 5 King of Concrete competitions this season. It was easily one of my best Open wins yet!
Next up was Beast of Bondi. It was a hot, fun day, and I really enjoyed getting back into Bondi Bowl. Unfortunately, I peaked way too early on the day and couldn’t lay my run down in the finals. However, the judges liked the parts of the run that they did see, and I managed to place 3rd in the Opens. Still a solid result but I had a lot more to offer earlier in the day.
I then had a few weeks without competition which allowed me to address some injuries, work on my 540s and tweak some new flip tricks.
Last weekend I travelled to Canberra for the Belco Bowl Jam. It was a fun day, Belco is a gnarly, old school bowl and the jam is always pretty wild. There was a bunch of awesome skaters competing and I enjoyed battling with RJ Barbaro – one of my favourite Australian skateboarders. I ended up winning the Best Trick, picked up some other cash and came 2nd to RJ in the King of the Bowl.
I’m now up at the Gold Coast for Bowlzilla which is the Australian Park Championships for 2019. Hopefully, the rain will hold off and I’ll get some practice.
I’ll be back at school next week before I’m off to Western Australia for Busselton King of Concrete and then St Kilda King of Concrete the weekend after if I have any energy left.
