A great day of skating for the Vogue Me FWS Pro Skateboard Street Semi-finals

It was an exciting semi-final on a beautiful day in Chengdu featuring riders from all over the world. 24 Riders competed to be part of the 12 qualified for tomorrow's final. The format consisted of 6 heats of 4 riders, given two 1 min runs of which the best run counts.

Riders were judged on their amplitude, flow, speed, use of the park, style, difficulty and versatility.

This year's Park kept everyone on their toes with a succession of rails, ledges, gaps, banks and quarterpipes. This year's new obstacles included a huge new rail to bank, a fat flatbar, and a tiled bank reminiscent of San Francisco's famous China banks.

Ivan Monteiro qualifies 2nd with some technical grind combos including a fs noseblunt down the rail, a tre-flip noseblunt and a halfcab tailslide 270 out on the low to high. After harsh debating the judges decided to give Ike Keyaki from Osaka, Japan the lead with a score of 84.75. Ike's flowing, casual style and lack of bails is what gave him the win. He wowed the crowd and judges with a perfect switch fs feeble on the big rail and a fully steezed-out fs feeble to fakie on the 5m long flatbar. 

Richard Tury comes in 3rd with his signature heelflip to boardslide down the rail. 

Other highlights included Ryo Sagawa's huge switch fs flip to flat and Dave Bachinsky's fs blunt flip out. South African skater Ngubane Khule is a newcomer who rides fast and with a lot of style earning him a spot in tomorrow's final.