PORT JERVIS—Skateboarders from as far away as Australia, Peru, and Argentina converged in Port Jervis on Sept. 4 for the third annual ACME Downhill Longboard and Luge Show at Elks-Brox Memorial Park. Pascal Jean, 40, drove five hours from Montreal, Canada to be there, his third year. “There’s not many races on the east coast,” he said. “There’s like five.”
Emily Pross, from Mount Vernon, N.J. who is currently ranked number one in the world according to the International Downhill Federation (IDF) was also there. She said she practices at the Elks-Brox Memorial Park when she’s not too busy studying marketing and communications at Berkeley College in Dover, N.J. The race also drew some local talent.
Organizer Tom Barnhart, who started the event, said the City of Port Jervis has been easy to work with and he hopes to continue to have the event there.
The race is pretty straight forward: participants line up at the top of the roughly mile-long hill and try to be the first to cross the finish line at the bottom. As of last year, the race is registered with IDF so competitors can use the points they earn at the race towards their IDF score. Barnhart said that is why so many international skaters came. “There are successful races that are not IDF, but my experience with this is that IDF is crucial.”
