By Peter Madsen


Skateboard contests – even at the professional level – rarely feature flawless runs. Even a first-place finishing skater usually has to work around a couple snafus that inevitably creep into each line of tricks. Not so, however, at the Playstation Pro Finals for Chaz Ortiz, the 14-year-old amateur skater who laid down some of the finest runs of this year’s Summer Dew Tour and snatched the Dew Cup from three-time winner Ryan Sheckler.

Witnessing Chaz at the beginning of a burgeoning skate career is something like seeing an avatar of a skateboard videogame come to life. Chaz’s second run was nearly incredible, as he kickflipped into most of his grind tricks; in fact, his lines on the hand-rails and bank-to-ledges read like a so-hot-right-now textbook on street skating’s most technical trickery: kickflip backside crooked grind, kickflip backside lipslide, kickflip frontside feeble. When he ran out of kickflip into- variations, he kickflipped out-, as he did with the frontside boardslide he slid across the bank-to-waist-high-rail. During the open skate jam, he sandwiched the same boardslide between two kickflips: a trick-combo usually reserved for upper-echelon technicians like Chris Cole, Daewon Song, or Chris Haslam. As for his effortless flow: Chaz’s style is without comparison. Remarkable, too, was the calm expression on Chaz’s face throughout his runs, which conveyed the kind of ease you feel when cruising a local skatepark with buddies, rather than competing at a high-profile contest broadcasted live to millions of global viewers. Take, for example, the at-the-buzzer stand-up frontside noseblunt slide Chaz stretched across the bank-to-rail, and the way he seemed to shrug as he stomped it down bolts. Plain and simple, Chaz’s skating puts a smile on your face.

In interviews shortly after wrangling the 2008 Dew Cup, Chaz spoke easily with reporters, congratulating the other skaters and expressing his happiness and gratitude to have been able to compete with his heroes.

“I’m going to be out here trying to take it home again next year,” the teenager said, currently a 9th grader in his hometown of Chicago. “But first thing’s first: I have to go back to school on Wednesday.”