Here is my write up for the ACE OF O-1 Competition held by Alex Guiha!
First the cold steel facts.
Here are all the participants in an order you will also see at the end:
Derek Graybill, Alexandr Denisovsky, Sergey Kuznetsov, Alex Guiha, Andrey Osipov, Josh Goldthorp, Jan Heller, Austin Seitter, Robert Miller, Emanuel Hommerich, Delmar Carter, Dmitriy Anisimov, Juha Lehtimaeki, Florian Faisstnauer, Carl-August Mertz, Devin Hoover, London Schuirmann, Martin Kotte, Phil McMahon, Shawn Kapusta, Tom Flesher
All the countries who were involved:
USA 10x
Russia 4x
Germany 4x
Canada 1x
Austria 1x
Finland 1x
Alex Guiha did it again and after the King of cold rolled Steel he created the ACE of O-1 competition which was even bigger with lots of new and old names in the game. So it was an absolute great contest with all these benders over the world.
To make it clear again! We payed nothing for this contest and even all the shipping rates were done by Alex. And we will get the Challenge Bars from Alex for succesfull bends including shipping. This is so much more than a normal competition and I don´t know why and how Alex is doing all of this, but there is nothing but pure gratefulness from my side. Thank you Alex, for all you are doing for steelbending you crazy bastard! This competition was very exciting for most of us because it was the target to bend Drill Rod and as far as I know all the guys outside of the USA has never touched Drill Rod before, so we had no idea what we will get.
5 bars with two attempts for every bender.
"P"
"Q"
"R"
"11/32"
"23/64"
all at 7" length
Alex gave us a short note about what to expect at every single bar, but as it was a complete new material for the most of us, there where a lot of surprises before and during a bend. We had nearly three months to complete all of our bars and in the end I think it was a very good amount of time.
It was great to see lots of bends in this time, with flash bends and great battles to get the bars done. It was a hard one as you can see in the results and therefor it was no surprise that there is a domination from the russians with nice and perfect executions. Also not a big surprise was the winner of the contest because Derek showed up and as we all know he is still from another planet when it comes to bending. Congrats for showing this again with total domination over every bar in one session. Hats off for this, but hats down for the worst videos in a very long time. What was going on there Derek!?
Also all the other were great to watch. I am very happy that our german bending community was in action with some nice bends. Cheers to you! Ihr tollkühnen Hasardeure!
The execution from Alex Denisovsky was again world class stuff. To see the technical difference to Sergey Kuznetsov who also destroyed every bar was very nice to watch. And Alex Guiha was raising again during this contest, will this ever stop!? Hopefully not! Was great so see our youngest guy in the Top 5, Andrey Osipov who is in his early twenties besides our grandpa Robert Miller who smashed the first three bars which was very impressive.
Big names from the past like Juha and Delmar and from the present like Josh were there. Our "newbie" Austin who is strong like a tank played also the game and even the man behind steelbendrussia Dmitry Anisimov take part with nice bends.
Thank you all for making this contest as it was and again: huge thanks to Alex Guiha for making this possible!
I created a digital ACE Card for all the succesfull benders and you can download it here directly under these lines. Feel free to show them to your neighbors, co-workers, parents and give them to your kids that they can show it in the kindergarten or school. Also print it out and place them in the bedroom. Your wife will love it!
