Photo Epic & Results: FISE Montpellier 2018 Pro Slopestyle Finals by lunatyk

FISE Montpellier 2018 is done and dusted. Literally dusted, because we experienced some scorching heat here in South of France. The saving grace was a light breeze, which helped fight off high temperatures. However, it wasn't this easy yesterday, as the "invisible enemy" destroyed riding and postponed qualifying to today. Most of the riders started practice early in the morning to feel confident going into the main event. Newcomer Owen Marks clearly was into it, going through the course lap after lap. Dawid Godziek was also present, but unfortunately, he didn't qualify to the finals.

Some of the riders went down in a bad way; Lukas Huppert didn't even finish his breakfast when he got text that the course is open for practice, only to crash a little later—taking him out for the rest of the day. Extremely unlucky was Thomas Genon, who over-rotated a frontflip on the big booter, went over the bars and hit the deck hard, resulting in a left shoulder dislocation. He's tough as nails though, so we expect to see him at Crankworx Innsbruck.

The finals went well, with Nicholi Rogatkin taking the top step, followed by Tomas Lemoine in second and Diego Caverzasi in 3rd place. Lukas Knopf and Louis Reboul are happy winners of Wild cards for Crankworx Les Gets.

Alex Alanko wasn't his usual-self in the final round due to a crash on cork 720 earlier in the day.

Remy Carra may not have gotten the highest score of the day, but he earned "Rider of the Day" as voted by the public.

Classic Paul Genovese - fully stretched backflip superman seatgrab. Paul was hyped to be in the finals and he gave it all. Always a pleasure to see this Canadian rider going through the set of jumps.

Paul Couderc rode really good all contest long. Despite a crash in the second run in the finals, he got himself the 9th place.

Massive 360 tuck-no-hander from Jakub Vencl on the biggest jump of the contest.

Jakub ended up in the 8th.

Owen Marks - remember that name!

Fresh blood from Aptos, CA is here. Owen was killing it, he managed to get himself all the way up from pre-qualies to the finals where he finished in the 7th. The blessings from the previous owner of his bike might help a bit... Yes, it's Brandon Semenuk's old bike.

Tom Isted was on fire! He's super pumped to ride MTB and wants to get some proper results.

Tom came with a clear plan for this event - getting a Wild card to Crankworx series. Unfortunately, it wasn't mean to be.

Louis Reboul and his nicely extended superman double seatgrab on the step up.

Louis loves doing cannonball trick and he started mixing then into an impressive combos. A cannonball to late tailwhip is a sick move for sure!

Lukas Knopf qualified in 1st and rode strong in the finals, but dropped down just off the podium into 4th place.

Diego Caverzasi and his big bag of tricks put him right in the 3rd. He gets more and more consistent with results, which surely is a good thing for this young Italian rider.

Tomas Lemoine in 2nd place, only 0.66 of a point behind Nicholi. The Frenchman had all the reasons to keep a big smile on his face.

Super stoked to make FISE finals happen, as we struggled with wind the day before. Had to put the qualifiers and the finals on the same day, which made it a hectic day, but we're still happy to put it on! The crowd came in full force, the weather was amazing, some guys got a bit unlucky, other got lucky - that's the way it goes. I am over the moon to end up as the champ today. My first FISE was when I was 13 years-old and to finally get my first top of the podium here after so many years feels incredible.—Nicholi Rogatkin