Review by Gianluigi Bosco.
Great vibes from Tokyo. 32 competitors from 8 countries battled out in the afternoon of August 31st for ten spots in the final. The crowd was one of the best ever as the venue was packed from the very beginning of the qualifying round to the results announcement.
By 7.30pm the finals were ready to start with 5 Japanese guys against 5 guys from the rest of the world. After 10 amazing flair rounds the results came out as the following:
In 10th place was Mitunobu Sakaiya, one of the local guys. Nice performance but a few too many drops pushed him down a bit.
In 9th place was Alex Gostilovskly, all the way from Russia. He had a great performance with many original move and great stage presence. Unfortunately he had a massive 50 points penalty as he neglected to pour one of the sponsors. Watch out for this guy in the near future.
In 8th place Keisuke Goto, another local. A very solid performance got the audience going, and secured him a very respectful placement.
Another crowdʼs favorite was Koutaro Mabuchi, who moved up two places from his qualification spot to get 7th place. Well done.
In 6th position we surprisingly find Marek Posluzsny adding some new moves to his routine.
Unfortunately he had a bit too many drops, and that affected a lot his stage presence.
In 5th place was Adam Branczyck. Fairly clean routine with only two drops, putting on a great show for the crowd. The deduction judges did a great job tho spotting a missing pour on the sponsor product, and that set him back 50 points. What a shame.
Next we find Hiroshi Ichikawa, one of the Japanese veterans. His confidence on stage and a lot of interesting moves pushed him right up to 4th place. What a great result for him.
Moving onto the podium…
In 3rd place we found a known face, Mr. Mitsuhiro Kaneshiro. After 14 years flairing he was still able to put on a great show with just one drop and the people loved it. Well done Mitsu.
In 2nd place was Vaclav Abraham, who won the flair with an almost flawless round. Crazy hard moves as usual performed as if was nothing. Very impressive and just 3.5 points away from the victory.
And in 1st place, once again, Mr Tomek Malek. Few new moves and tunes well put together, he managed to get the crowd go nuts for him. He had a little more deductions than Vaclav but his cocktail scored 10 points more, which closed the gap between the two and allowed the Polish beast to secure this one too.
Best cocktail was awarded to Mitsuhiro Kaneshiro with an impressive 44 points out of 50.
Congratulations to all competitors and to the organisation who did a great job!