A review by Gianluigi Bosco
Hello flair peeps! The Asian flair tour has come to an end, with the last of three comps in two weeks, Barstylez the big match.
Amazing organization and great response, with 46 competitors representing 20 countries.
After an afternoon of qualifying, the judges added up the scores and announced the 10 finalists. The venue filled up quickly, and by 8pm we were ready to start.
Here is a summary on how it happened, starting from the competitor who got 10th place, and writing our way up to the top contestant.
Agnieszka Bochniak from Poland had very few deductions in the heats, and that allowed her to be in the finals. Her second perfomance had few more mistakes, but still, it was nice to see a girl battling out with the top guys on stage! She couldnʼt improve her 10th position, but I think that she can definitely be happy with it.
In 9th position we find Alex Searle from England. Qualified in 7th with a good performance, in the final he unfortunately had a round similar to the one he had in Bali. Too many deductions for him.
In 8th place an another competitor that we saw a week ago in Bali, Vitaly Kolpin from Russia. His flair is different from the others, as in many of his moves glasses and bottles come in contact. Itʼs quite a risky choice but it seems to pay off as Vitaly started to be constantly in the finals lately. Good performance for him but a loss of concentration towards the end made him lose many points in the entertainement section.
In 7th place we find Manuel Wieser. Very close to make it to the final a week ago (11th place), Manu didnʼt waste the chance this time, putting on a good overall performance with very few deductions. Congratulations for the results and also for your provisory 5th place on the WFA leaderboard!
In 6th we find the only Asian competitor in the top ten, once again Yi Che Liao from Taiwan. Fresh from his great result in Bali, he probably put a bit of pressure on himself to try to repeat his exploit. This time he wasnʼt so clean tho, as he also had an unlucky break during his round. Still a remarkable result for tho.
Back to Russia for the 5th spot. Alexander Shtifanov was as usual one of the favourite to get the title, but once again he couldnʼt perform as well as we saw him in other occasions. He was still able to impress everybody with his flair, but with that many deductions itʼs impossible to reach the highest spots in a comp nowadays.
In 4th place we find an another known face in the Grand Slam, Vaclav Abraham. Heʼs one of the four competitors who was able to enter all three finals, and itʼs not hard to understand why. The semplicity with which he can throw great ammount of difficulty is astonishing. The only thing that kept him out of the top three was his coreography; great of course but not as good as the guys on the podium.
Onto the top three….
Poland dominated once again the scene: Starting from Aga being the first Polish girl in a GS finals, Adam Branzcyk continued the Polish party tooking third place. Last yearʼs winner had a good performance very well balanced. A break in his working flair didnʼt affect his composure at all, and he kept going towards his second podium in a row. Well done.
In second place we find an another Polish competitor, Tomek Malek. He repeated the great performance he had in Bali, with an amazing routine filled with difficulty. The only downside was a break in the middle of his performance, but that didnʼt stop the crowd cheering.
Unfortunately for him tho, there was an another competitor to go. Marek Posluszny just went after him to perform one of his best rounds ever. His latest win a week ago gave him even more confidence, and if Marek is comfortable on stage he becomes almost impossible to beat. Well deserved pal.
Big contratulations also to all the other contestants, and especially to Shahmil Lin, the organizer, who was able to put together one of the best competitions out there at the moment. See you next year!