Written by Amit Subba
It's good to see how Skateboarding community is growing steadily in India and people across the country are doing their best to promote the culture and one such event is Jugaad Skateboarding competition brought to life by Gautham Kamath, a Bangalore based skateboarder who has been skateboarding since a decade.
First Jugaad was held in Delhi, 2015 and skaters from Nepal and India participated in it. As the year passed, this competition started attracting more and more skaters from all the corners of India like Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kovalam, Mahabalipuram, Goa, Varanasi, Kochi, Sikkim, Mizoram and its neighbor countries like Nepal and Maldives with around 250-300 skaters as attendees in which 86 of them participated to skate in the competition from all age groups which made Jugaad 2021 a huge success by setting up an example in itself. Of course, the organizers have come a long way and there were so many obstacles which they had to deal with.
What makes Jugaad even more successful is that the level of skateboarding of all the skaters got better and consistent alongside. Before there were only few dominating skaters but in this competition it was really hard to guess who is going to win. What was even more amazing was to see the level of performance from the girls and kids participants as they were equally giving tough competition to their opponents and everyone was trying for gnarly tricks in their final heat.
Gautham says, " Jugaad was created to provide a platform to the Indian skateboarders where they can come and perform and support them in every possible ways in terms of them being an athlete, artist, filmmaker with no biased environment.
Jugaad welcomes skaters from different backgrounds. Either street, freestyle, transitions which makes this competition popular among everyone.
Of course the Covid-19 wave has not calmed down but both organizers and participants took good care by following all the protocols and made this a successful event.
Jugaad gives an opportunity to the skaters to gather and share their knowledge among each other and with their favorite skaters or friends. It’s more of like a festival of 3 days. I personally feel competitions encourages gathering of people with same interests and meeting each other personally not just enhance our skills but the moments we share together becomes priceless with loads of fun.
This year Jugaad followed their ritual of 4th day dedicated to “Ring Of Fire” at Cave Skatepark in collaboration with Holystoked (Bangalore based skate shop) It’s more like an after party and fun skateboarding with music and the whole fire thing takes it to next level. Skaters that days just comes to have fun and say goodbye and see you next year.
List of winners as follows:
SUPER MINUTE SENIOR
1st Gajendra Bardewa
2nd Saradh Rai
3rd Jay Singh
SUPER MINUTE (junior)
1. Ashwin
2. Rishi Dinesh Shewani
3. Muhammad Bin Javid
SUPER MINUTE (Girls)
1. Vidhya
2. Loriin rai
3. Shraddha Gaikwad
TIC TAC
1 Harish P
BEST TRICK
Dhiraj
MOST VALUABLE PLAYER
Ali Sahil
All the photographs are from Fernando Ferreira and Akhil. You can follow their work on Instagram and other social media handles.