The second annual viewer-voted Superunknown Best Trick contest was a heated battle between last year’s victor, Austin Torvinen and newcomer Jed Kravitz. When all the votes were counted, Jed took home the win for his textbook rodeo 5 truck over a box (@ 03:04) narrowly edging out Austin Torvinen’s super-steezey heavy-headed switch wallride trick (@ 04:01).

Also in contention for top honors were Dom Laporte’s switch 270 on 270 out of a BURLY 4kink rail (@ 00:37) and Laurent O Martin’s 180 roof gap tranny (@ 00:47). Check ‘em out along with the other nominations- over 4 minutes of straight bangers!

The final vote Tally!

Alright- we know what you’re saying- how the #@%$ did someone who wasn’t even a finalist walk away with the win? Well, first off, Lucas should have been a finalist, but somewhere during the process of selecting a dozen of the top vids from nearly 100 entries some signals got crossed and Lucas got the short end of the stick. Once his vid went live, it was pretty much the unanimous top choice of all the athletes in our crew, and with this year’s contest being such a tough one to judge we offered up our input and handed this one over to our riders to make the final call.

There’s no doubt that this year’s field was the most talented to date and any one of the Finalists could have easily walked away with the win- Dom Laporte arguably has the most impressive urban shots this contest has seen; Mikkel Jøraandstad has the deepest bag of tricks and some of the smoothest jumping style out there; Torvinen, Boville, and Doan crush everything with super unique style, and Emile Bergeron and Alex Beaulieu are well on their way to becoming the next big QC exports; and we could go on…

“You could put together a crew from this year’s entries and probably make a movie that rivals any pro flick out there- the level of talent was insane,” said Level 1′s Josh Berman. “A few years ago we’d be able to narrow the field down to the top 2 or 3 entries, but these days its almost impossible to say that one Finalist is more deserving than the others. Every one of them will undoubtedly be destroying edits and vid segments over the next few years, landing on top of podiums, and otherwise making names for themselves on a global scale.”

Last year’s Superunknown XIII winner Sig Tveit had this to say: “Honestly my pick out of all of them would be Lucas Stål-Madison. In my opinion I think he is the rider who would have the most to give Level 1. He definitely offers some creativity and different flavor that has been unseen for the Level 1 viewers, and viewers of any other production company in that matter.”

Parker White: “Lucas has completely his own style and seems like a hilarious kid, he’s really got something unique going on with his skiing. My Vote is Lucas.”

Phil Casabon: “It’s hard (to pick a winner since the) talent pool is so deep. My favorite is not a finalist but I think has most flavor and uniqueness out of all- Lucas Stål-Madison.”

Ahmet Dadali: “I thought he was ill man- from the moment I saw it I said there’s something different with this guy that keeps my eyes on the computer screen. So many entries were ill, but Lucas brought his own style into the mix.”

Mike Hornbeck: “LSM’s Superunknown entry was a video that I re-watched a couple times and it still left me wanting to see more. His style, edge control, and his tricks are all so dialed, and you can really tell he knows what he is doing because there isn’t any pizza in his video.”

Lucas had the following words and pix to offer:

“When Berman told me I won superunknown , I lol’d. I did’nt even make finals how could I win? But then he said the whole crew where really stoked about the video and I was like, wait he’s serious. HE IS FUCKING SERIOUS GAAAAAAHHHH

I was so damn suprised and so damn happy, that my hand started shaking like crazy. So all the words that I was gonna write back to Berman got all messed up and his first impression of me was probably pretty wierd, haha. At first I wasn’t even sure I was gonna enter the contest or not, since I didn’t have any big tricks in it. But decided that I’d put together an edit of shots that I think is ill and we’ll see what happens. And boy, am I glad I did!

Can’t wait to go out next season and put all my energy to try get something that stands out!

I wanna give a shout out to all enteries this year, especially kids like Austin and Dominic and everyone else killing it this year! Also shout out to all my friends who believed in me and pushed me to keep doing my own thing.

Peace!”

A highlight reel of the biggest, best, most tech, creative, and innovative tricks from the Superunknown IX contest. We went back through ALL the entries- Finalists, Honorable Mentions, and the rest, and pulled 19 shots that really stood out.

Whose trick takes the cake?!

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About Superunknown:
The first video talent-search contest is still the biggest and the best, pulling in entries from across the globe- 9 years deep!

Superunknown IX brought in nearly 100 entries from 15 different countries as the hungriest and most talented up-and-comers in the game try to follow in the footsteps of past winners like Tom Wallisch, Corey Vanular, Mike Clarke, Niklas Eriksson, Logan Imlach, and last year’s winner, Sig Tveit.

Are you excited? Because we are! Excited to announce the 13 Superunknown IX Finalists. After the release of our 11 Honorable Mentions last week, we’re shifting gears, presenting you the 13 most impressive videos of this year’s contest. We’ll be dropping two Finalists daily this week (and three on Saturday). Stay tuned!