As you all know, the Gypsy Games is an event of freedom. No tight schedule, no pressure, just riding. You have a whole week to get used to the floor, progress, pick up some new tricks, work on your combos, make friends, and have fun at the parties.

Every Gypsy Games has different atmosphere, though. The people who come and ride influence it a lot. This year it was even more friendly than last year, even though we had thought that it could not be any better than that.

The good old city again became full of flatlanders, and this year we had the pleasure to welcome the king of the parties, the funniest guy of them all, Hanawa Shimpei from Japan. Besides being an awesome rider, we were quite impressed on his dancing abilities. Whatever he did, it was funny. Thanks for the positive vibes, Hanawa!

There was a very good number of foreign riders such as Shane Badman from Australia, Valter Guerreiro from Portugal, John LeBlond from France, Markus Redlberger and Sebastian Grubinger from Austria, the Czech guys. Plus, lots of Hungarian riders came, too: from the very beginner to the pro level, you could see them all.

There was Peter Szabolcsi who now rides brakeless, and he mastered the junkyard pumping in inside circles to footjam decade back to the pedals, Laszlo Tivadar who can pump no-handed spinning caboose while holding the bike with his right foot under the headset, and Peter Sarlos who has really dialed and smooth frontwheel combos, just to name a few. We have all missed Adam Kun, but he was in France for some shows. Next year he will be here, too!

The week of the camp was very enjoyable, and you could see the kids progressing from day to day. We did a very good flatland movie premiere for Simon O'Brien's "Made You Look" DVD. That was a shock to some riders that have never seen the movie before... After that, we have watched the trailer of Trick Stars 7 which is coming out in November 2006, and some trailers from the Debrecen locals. Since the weather was quite unfriendly on Friday night, the majority of people stayed for a little party that turned to a really wild one with some breakdancing, drinking and overall craziness.

We had to postpone the qualifiers from Saturday to Sunday because it was raining like crazy all day long, but it did not prevent anybody to practice on the very wet courts when it has stopped. You could see riders like David Nagy and Peter Sarlos busting their hardest tricks as if it was all dried up... Crazy boys.

We had some really nice dinners in a local pizzeria that also offered some traditional Hungarian dishes such as roasted pork "gypsy style"... Every second rider ate this dish all week long, just to adapt to the Gypsy Games more.. Hanawa also loved it "gypsy style", but he was still capable of eating his fist, and then have some beer, coke and pasta trough his nose.

After the pizzeria, we went straight to the OG party which turned out to be even wilder than the previous one, with some hardcore whipped cream action (I have no clue whose idea it was, but all of a sudden everybody was covered in cream...) Dj Volrab has played the best selection of eighties and hip-hop music, so everybody was really into dancing..

We were quite lucky with the weather on Sunday, it became very sunny and the courts dried up. We had to be a bit faster, because we had to hold the prelims and the finals on the same day, but it was all good. There were lots of riders entering the expert, master and pro classes.

Expert class had some riders that did really good tricks and combos. The winner, Sandor Tatray did jumps to crosshand steamroller, brakeless catapult and other good moves, Attila Szell performed upsidedown megaspin combos, and Norbert Francz got third place with megaspins, gerator bikevarials and halfpacker combos.

The Masterclass was dominated by the young and very dedicated Daniel Boros who did crossfooted hitchhiker jump to regular hitch, timemachines and a hitchhiker kickflip for first place. Zoltan Papp had nice rolling combos for second, Norbert Onodi did some nice backward rolling tricks and links for third.

The pro qualifiers caused us a hard time. The level was quite high, but not too many riders did clean runs, so it was extremely difficult to pick the riders that advanced to the finals. Hanawa and Markus were the only foreign riders that made the cut, even though we put much emphasis on trying not to be biased in any way.

In the finals, Laszlo Tivadar just could not do a good run, just like Hanawa.. We know that they are capable of doing much better. The third place went to Norbert Kiss who had a pretty consistent run with only a few touches. Markus, the master of all cross-footed and cross-handed whiplashes and rolling combos, did a quite good run and finished at second place. And the man who could have taken all the money if there had been prize money was Peter Sarlos. The 18-year-old kid did a really outstanding run, pulling all his signature moves. Congratulations to Peter and all the participators!

We are really happy that so many riders think of the OG Summer Gypsy Games as the place to be. We truly hope that next year more people will have the chance to come. It will surely be a week to remember.

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