Last weekend saw the Roadhouse in London play host to the next episode of the Roadhouse World Flair Heats – the World Open. We love the World Open events, it is always a hard fought heat with bartenders flying in from all over the globe to compete for a place in the Roadhouse Grand Finals in November. We had competitors from Denmark, Italy, Russia, France and more, this time around.The last Roadhouse Heat was of course the popular Freestyle competition where Italian bartender Michael Moreni (@michaelflaironepiece) claimed his first and well deserved Roadhouse win.
The World Open score weightings are similar to that of the Grand Final or any of the other ‘Opens’ (i.e. not a tandem, freestyle, battle comp, etc). That means equal weighting for the difficulty of the flair bartending, the originality, the overall choreography, and relevance. Drops, spills and breaks are not counted as deductions. These rules make for a highly competitive battle on stage, featuring all the elements we want to see in a great flair bartending performance.
But the real question is, who walked away with a place in the Grand Finals and £850 in cold hard… cheque!? Lets find out…
The Result
This first Roadhouse World Open of the year was by far the closest competition we have seen for a long time – it really went down to the wire in the final and it was decided in the end by less than one point! WFA Black Grade Roman Zapata (@romanzapata), originally hailing from Argentina, took the top place – closely followed by last month’s Roadhouse Heat winner Michael Moreni. Congratulations to Roman, we look forward to seeing what he brings to the Roadhouse World Finals. As Michael already secured a place in the World Finals in last months heat as has Bryan Levato, that means we also welcome Ivan Atanasov and Vlad Toma to the Finals in November. Congratulations to you all!
Here are the final scores in more detail. As you can see, it was rather close!
What is next?
The next Roadhouse Heat comes on the 28th of April 2019 and it is the super cool Battle competition. This is one heat you do not want to miss. The set up is completely different to any other Roadhouse Heat and the flair is fast and furious! Imagine a B-Boy bottle but with flair bartending instead. For real. Don’t miss this one. It will be live streaming as always – stay up to date with the WFA social media to find the links and more…
Check out more details on the upcoming Battle competition, including who’s competing, here: https://test-wfa-vs4.pantheonsite.io/events/rwf-battle-head-to-head-april-heat-2019/
Highlights
To watch the full highlights of the World Open, including every flair performance and the results ceremony, please visit our livestream page:
https://livestream.com/RoadhouseWorldFlair/events/8613913/videos/189114072