The first ever WITP in Bulgaria took place in Varna, a nice city located on the Black Sea coast, actually the further east european WITP location. Of course it is no longer part of the USSR since 1989 and even if you can still spot some gipsys passing by with their horse-powered caravan, the whole country is nice, with sunny spring weather, some good skate spots, cheap and delicious food and pretty girls.



After a couple of days spent in Sofia with the Volcom team on tour, we all headed to Varna on a 9h trip. The city council just finished the building of the first concrete skatepark of the country, and Javor, our Volcom distributor down there decided it was the right time to run a Wild In the Parks, to celebrate the grand opening. So after waiting outside the gates until the officials finished cleaning the blue park to shine on TV –they cleaned every micron of dust with water !... more than 100 skaters assaulted the virgin ‘crete trying to be the « first ever person to grind this obstacle ».



Registration started at the same time and kids couldn’t believe they got a free tee, stickers and candies while entering for free… More people and officials showed up when the session started to heat up with some of the Volcom team riders on demo mode where exploring new lines and showing the kids what can be done.





The contest started after the « official » opening and speech of the Mayor who looked pleased to see that many skateboarders showing up that day… Contestants came from all over the country and locals weren’t at an advantage because nobody skated the park before that day (there were no possibilities of sneaking a session, according to some locals, officials are very « powerful »…). Aussie Chima Fergusson made the trip overseas just to judge the spot #1, rail and stairs with a bank on the side, and witnessed some nice tricks before giving his shirt away (in exchange for a bra ?). Andi Wehlter judged spot #2 with Eniz Fazliov and Roberto Aleman (3 judges !) , a lot of action was going on the 2 ledges and stairs : Fs flip, switch tailside, noseslide bigspin out, nosegrind 180 out, Switch flip etc…





Fabian Verhaeghe and a skater from Sofia did a good job judging spot #3 consisting on a long manual pad to bank, and a bank corner. Some gnartech tricks where pulled off such as a nollie inward heelflip, heelflip manual (long long) kicklip out, and some guys gapping the whole thing too… At sunset we finished off the free hot dogs but still had some stickers and drinks. The skatepark got lit up by those brand new giant lights and also by the finals action. Javor Stoyanov from Sofia finished 2nd in the qualifications but he wasn’t listed in the finals so when we figured it out, he attacked the obstacles hard to pull at least one hammer on every spot but got injured on a bad landing while kickflipping Chima’s stairs. He took home the cash courtesy of Electric’s « Hype of the day » also a spot in the WITP euro finals in Malmö. The final continued and the prize ceremony went down, followed by a long awaited product toss for the kids… That was a good one and for sure next year the kids are going to rip the place up after skating it on a daily basis.




Thanks a ton to Hazel Sports team, Jelle, the speaker, skaters who helped us, Volen Marchev, Boulevard, SkateBG and Whiteroom, Skate club Varna, Electric and all the riders that came enjoy the day.

Results

15-:
1. Daniel Fotev, 13 y., Varna
2. Peio Stanchev, 14 y., Dobrich
3. Dimitar Mirchev, 13 y., Varna
4. Hristian Petkov, 13 y., Varna
5. Mario Georgiev, 10 y., Pomorie

16+:
1. Pavel Tsarev, 16 y., Varna
2. Lozio Dimitrov, 20 y., Sofia
3.Petko Mitev, 19 y., Sofia
4.Ventsi Penkov, 22 y., Sofia
5.Petko Kirev, 21 y., Stara Zagora

"Hype Of The Day”: Javor Stoyanov, 21 y., Sofia

Via Volcom Press Relase