Courtesy of Red Bull Media Service Team
Photographer Credit:
Joerg Mitter / Red Bull Content Pool
Inline skating champions, Eito and Takeshi Yasutoko make their Red Bull Crashed Ice debut in the 2017/2018 season finale in Edmonton, Alberta this weekend.
Newcomers to the world’s fastest sport on skates, Eito and Takeshi Yasutoko of Japan said on Friday they were looking forward to the unique challenges of Ice Cross Downhill ahead of their debut this weekend at a Red Bull Crashed Ice race in Canada
“We just have been ice skating for two weeks”, said Takeshi, who is the two-time X Games champion and the younger brother of Eito Yasutoko.
He has been inline skating since he was nine years old, but admitted, “We have only skated on ice five or six times.”
Eito and Takeshi are two of the world’s best and most aggressive Inline skaters. Each brother has over 100 medals in the VERT events at the X Games, Gravity Games and other contests.
They believe Red Bull Crashed Ice is the perfect new challenge for the brothers from Kobe, Japan. But the sport is a lot more complicated than simply exchanging their wheels for blades.
“Both sports are so similar but also so different” said Eito, who is the older brother and won the 2013 VERT World Extreme Games championship in Shanghai. The Yasutoko brothers started learning the ropes yesterday on the 455-meter long ice track in Edmonton with the help of previous ATSX Ice Cross Downhill World Championship winners and top contenders for this season’s championship Scott Croxall of Canada and Cameron Naasz of the USA
Photographer Credit:
Joerg Mitter / Red Bull Content Pool
“We know how to jump well but on the ice it’s a little bit different,” said Eito.
“The most important thing about the Red Bull Crashed Ice is getting the basics down. We are still learning how to curve, how to stop and how to gain speed. Ice skating is so much fun, because you can react quicker and have more room to maneuver than you can on inline skates.”
Eito started Quad skating when he was three and progressed on to inline skating when he was nine, while Takeshi currently holds the Guinness World record for youngest X Games athlete at age 9 years
and 360 days.
The Yasutoko brothers are the sons of two roller-skaters, which may help explain their natural affinity towards inline skating. They have been fighting together since 1995. “It’s kind of being on the same team and at the same time we keep rivaling ourselves to get better” said Eito about the brothers’ dynamic relationship within the competitive nature of the sport.
The brothers completed their first ever Riders Cup race last week in the Canadian town of La Sarre, where Takeshi came in 56th and Eito came in 79th place. For their Red Bull Crashed Ice premier, they have realistic expectations about their goals.
“It’s simple really”, said Takeshi, “I want to complete the whole sections of course without any crashes for the beginning. I really would like to try the freestyle competition part because it incorporates the skills that I already have on the inline skates”
“I am so excited now,” added Eito. “The possibility to do both ice skating and inline skating is just really great. I also believe it’s going to be huge in Japan. Figure skating is really big there. I think that the speed and the high jumps will attract a lot of people”.