News

2015 Thumper won the Hawaii Shred Skate Parks Competition.

In 2012 Thumper moved back to Hawaii.

In 2011 he came in 4th in the King of Warriors Vert Competition in Barcelona

2010  Thumper came in 5th in The Moscow Invitational on vert.

2009
2nd C-Bus Throwdown
HIRSC CHAMPION
Featured in the Woodward Brochure and DVD over 95,000 in print (combined)
Thumper 08/09 online edit over 7,000 views
1 Day with Thumper online edit over 10,000 views
Featured in WOODWARD spine online edit over 1,100 views
Featured in AIL Woodward West online edit over 3,400 views
Featured in HIRSC online edit over 3,600 views
On Verus, CBS, for the World Championships 2008
Visiting pro at Woodward camp

Thumper’s video company.
My video company site is up. HIFOCUSED.com The main site is focused on wedding videography. Which is my main source of income. I also have an event video site as well. eventvideo.hifocused.com

Thumper places 6th World Championships 08
I finished 6th for inline vert, I was also the highest placing American at the event.
There were skaters from, 7 countries (Brazil, Australia, America, Holland, Spain, Belgium and England).
The event will be on CBS.
I have big plans for 09. I will probably be going to Europe and or Asia.

Thumper Makes top 7 Mr. Smalls Park Contest
I made top 7 in my first pro park competition at the Mr. Smalls Skate park in Pittsburgh.

Thumper Moves to Woodward
May 1 2008 I moved to Woodward and then got an apartment close by
in the town of Millheim. As different as it is from Hawaii. It’s been great to
have pros to skate with and great ramps to train on.

Thumper placed 7th at the World Championships in Dallas, Texas.
I went to Woodward East first for pretraiing
and got my 1080’s back and got my 360 fishbrains consistant as well.
I did both of them in my run.
I didn’t skate as clean as I would have liked but I am satisfied with my performance.

worlds07

For tv schedule of the contest go to: http://www.actionsportstour.com

Thumper took 5th at the LG San Diego Tour stop last September.
All most all the top names were there
and after having not been able to compete for all of 2006,
Sandiegocrew

his come back cotest performance was a good as he could have hoped.

For tv schedule of the contest go to: http://www.actionsportstour.com

Thumper Nagasako street, park, vert rollernews
here’s the edit and see what all the kids have to say.

Thumper Nagasako 2007 edit from HI FOCUSED on Vimeo.

http://www.rollernews.com/thumper-nagasako-street-park-vert_3530.html#comments

Winner Hawaii Real Street Competition HIRSC
I was super stoked to win the HIRSC.
Which is a milestone in me branching out from vert to street.
Here’s a link about it on rollernews.com
http://www.rollernews.com

True Acid durring the contest

trueacid

Hawaii Renaissance
In Line Skating DVD featuring Hawaii’s best rollerbladers.
http://www.rollernews.com/hawaii-renaissance-trailer_3319.html

In Film Barely Dead

I had a clip in the revolutionary film Barely Dead. Documenting the saga of rollerblading. I also contributed footage of other vert skating and had a trailer for my vert company Highrollaz.org in the bonus section of Barely Dead.

Thumper in Transition Magazine

http://www.transitionhawaii.com/features/profiles/2/1/thumper_nagasako

well written story about my injuries and lessons in 06.

2006-2007

2006 Was a rough year. I had wrist surgery twice and shoulder surgery. I took the season off from tour to heal. I persued other aspects of my life.Which included going back to school for a semester, moving from Maui to Oahu, building my video production company Hi Focused Productions and find a new way of life away from skating. I learned more about who I am without skating and my life away from the sport that I’ve been involved with for so long. I also got exposure through Transition who ran a 4 page story and a corner shot on the cover. And was in the Honolulu Advertiser talking about my injuries. I also wrote a story for One magazine on vert skating. I also made a trailer for the Highrollaz DVD which was featured in the bonus section of Daily Bread. Despite it all it’s given me a reviewed appreciation for what I do and a new hunger for this sport. As bad as my injuries and time off was I made the best of it and the lessons I learned will benefit me when I am back on tour this year!

2005 Rankings
The rankings were released. My rankings are 8th in the World and 2nd in America.
They take your top five finishes for the year. Since I was in only 4 events with the ASA I was short a contest so that substantially affected my rankings.

Off Season

January 16, 05
At the end of November I hurt my MCL.
I also have needed wrist surgery for over a year so I thought I would get that out of the way while my knee heals.
I went through some intense rehabilitation and am coming out of it all very well.
The time off has helped my mind set and I am almost healed up enough to start charging hard again.

Back From Europe!

I just got back home…. boy what a busy trip!
Last month I skating in the US Championships in Pomona at the LA fair, where I finished 8th.The title “US” is used loosely as there were pros from: Japan, Germany, US, Spain, Brazil, England and Belgium. Crowds were huge.

The crowd was bigger for in-line than for any of the other sports
the whole weekend. It was a very competitive contest.

Prior to the US Championships, I did Got Milk Demos in Pomona. They promote tobbaco-free kids.
I spent the following 2 weeks with a few other pros training at Camp Woodward.
We also had a video shoot for the Camp Woodward video.
It was a hard shoot because they wanted to make it into a vary dramatic and
artistic scene so they had only two stagelights and the rest of the ramp was dark.

I will include a video of that at the end of the year. http://www.woodwardwest.com
Then I took the long trip to the UK for the biggest rollerblading contest of the year,

the World Championships. The crowd was huge.

Arena seating on all sides of the ramp went up several tiers. I gave what was
said by sportswriter Chris Mitchell to be my best skating ever.

I was extremely pleased with my performance. All year I had wanted to do a run
packed with all my hardest tricks and a 1080 and do it flawless and this
was the first time I had done that in a contest.

My tricks included: 9 foot airs, 5401s, Flatspin 540, Hoverflip, 1080 (3
rotations), 900, flatspin 900, flatspin 720, fakie 900, 270 back unity, and
truespin topacid. I finished a strong 7th, the highest placing American at the event.
Marco De Santi finished 5th and Shane Yost finished 3rd both felt I had
gottan judged poorly and should have been seated at least 4th, maybe even 3rd.

It was the consensous among my fellow pros as well. Judging these
contests is quite a hard thing to do and there are many flaws that are being worked on to improve the fairness.
I then spent 3 days in Rome where we saw all the ancient sites and the
Vatican –they were all very impressive.

Then I went to Berlin to the Razors sEuropean Challenge. It was held at one of the two biggest youth
sports fairs in Europe. This place had 5 huge indoor areas that included
soccer, ping pong, 3 separate concert stages, bumper cars, basket ball,
skiing with snow into water and a street course and vert ramp, among other
things. All of Germany1s best was there as well as skaters from USA and
other parts of Europe. I gave a good performance and finished 3rd.
I then spent some time in Paris and NYC before coming back home.
It1s been a crazy year and a lot of traveling. I was traveling about 4
months this year.I went to California 5 times, New York 2 Times, New
Jersey 2 Times, Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, Pensylvania, England, Germany, France and Italy.
I got tons of exposure. All my cotests will be on TV with highlights
and on stations all over the world. Plus the exposure at the events,

at Woodward and the demos I did in Pomona.
After the World Finals airs on tv, I will send you a dvd of a lot of this
year1s exposure with other print exposure I have received throughout the season.

8th Place LG US Championships
Even though it’s titled “US” the field was full of international riders.
Skaters from: England, Germany, Brazil, Japan and US.
Many big names were there. The Yasutokos, Fabiola, and Matt Lindenmuth to
name a few. The contest was held at the LA County Fair in Pomona.
Thumper skated in “Got Milk Demos”  for a few days before the contest. They’re
shows on the ramp at the fair to promote the “Tobacco Free Kids
Organization” Hedid about 5 shows and autograph signing afterwards.
Thumper finished 8th in the contest.  It wasn’t his strongest performance and he finished 8th, but the scoring was very tight, with only 2 points separating me from 4th. He said he is determined to work hard to add points to his for the World Championships in Manchester later this month.   Of course all the biggest names will be there then so an 8th place finish would be a good showing there. Manchester is the biggest contest of the year.
http://www.lgactionsports.com/2005/events/asc/

5th Place MSS Pro Stop: Sacramento, CA

Thumper Nagasako took 5th a the mobile skate park series. The event was held at the California State Fair. The contest featured many of the worlds best. For info go to www.mssevents.com

At Woodward West and Woodward East

After the Cincinnati contest, Thumper spent 6 weeks at camp Woodward in PA. The biggest action sports camp in the world, with 10,000 campers per summer. He was there as a visiting pro. His job there was to do demos, teach and hang out with the campers. He also spent a week at camp Woodward in California. For more info check out www.woodwardcamp.com

4th Place MSS Pro Stop: Cincinnati, Ohio

Thumper Nagasako took 4th at the mobile skate park series. The contest was stacked with skaters from all over the world including the Yasutoko Bros. and Marc Englehart (2002 Gravity Games Champion). For info go to www.mssevents.com

Thumper Nagasako Profile on Ballistic TV

The segment aired on Hawaii wide channels.

Nagasako returns from offseason training.

Nagasako was at Woodward West Action Sports Camp. He had a great time doing some off season training with Marco De Sante, Rob Parker and Rich Parker. Then did some street skating afterwards. He stayed in LA with professional photographer Jeff Linett. Click here to view some of the photos.

Thumper Nagasako Filmed for Xterra Planet

Xterra Planet will be airing later in the year and broadcasts on NBC, CBS and ABC.

Thumper in Hawaiian Airlines Magazine

Thumper has been featured in Hawaiian Airlines’ magazine called, “Hana Hou!.” The magazine is printed bimonthly and is in all of Hawaiian airlines planes. The magazine goes to a million passengers every issue in the seat pockets of their flights to: Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Phoenix, Sacramento, Las Vegas, Ontario, Tahiti/Samoa, Sydney, Australia. Hawaiian Airlines flies more passengers from the West Coast to Honolulu than any other airline.

Here’s the link to the article in the February issue. Print issue has one other photo and the lead photo is so big that it covers a page and a half http://www.hanahou.com/fallingstar.html

 

LA Action Sports Vert World Championships

at the Los Angeles County Fair Sept 11, 04


Competition was fierce. The seventeen top ranked skaters in the world
came from Japan, Brazil, Spain, Holland, Australia and Tasmania, Canada,
Germany and three from the US to compete. Every skater from X-games was there
(except Taig Chris, who wasn’t happy with his skating at X and had decided to stay in France).
Temperatures were over 100 degrees when the preliminary rounds* were held

and only the top ten would compete in the finals. Thumper took 6th.
This was a real marathon as warm-ups started at 2pm and the last skater in finals finished at 10:30pm.
In his first run in the finals, Thumper threw down his best run in a
competition yet. It was laced with difficult tricks, several new this
season, putting him in 4th place at the end of the first runs, beating even
Eito Yasutoko, three-time X-games gold medalist who had won every contest
last year with no exceptions! Thumper showed that he was no longer a rookie
but was now a real contender for the top spots.
Thumper had an even more difficult run planned for his second run, but in
the practice between runs, he wasn’t able to hang on to his landing on a
particularly difficult trick and fell, hitting his face on the ramp.
Falls are common in this sport but this was one of the unlucky falls.
He tried to get up, and collapsed and just laid on the ramp.

Medics rushed onto the ramp and helped him up. He was wobbly and a few minutes later he
signaled that he was scratching for the second run.
One of the competitors said Thumper was ok, just a little dazed. But at the
end of the competition, the medic informed his mother that Thumper had a
concussion. He said he was bringing Thumper down from the deck soon and
warned his mother that he was asking the same questions over and over and
couldn’t recall anything that had happened since he fell.

He said Thumperwas improving but gave her a form of symptoms to watch for in the next 24
hours and to call 911 if they got worse.
With everyone else getting a second run and a chance to improve on their
first run scores, Thumper still fell only to 6th place and among this field
of elite skaters, that is an incredible feat. The other American took 4th.
The next day, Thumper had been scheduled to skate at the Core Tour finals in
Huntington Beach, California, but had to watch instead. As with the LG
Championships, the crowds were big and enthusiastic.
The day after the event, Thumper was still a bit unfocused but by Monday
he was feeling pretty much normal and went up to the Woodward training
facility. He resumed skating Tuesday and was once again nailing all his
tricks and had started working on new ones.

X-Games X, August 7, 2004

Thumper was one of only 11 rollerbladers in the world to qualify for X-Games,

held in the Staples Center Arena in LA and televised live on ESPN.

He placed 8th and was the highest placing American at the event.

He skated cleanly in both runs. His highest scoring run consisted of

a hoverflip, back to back 9’s, 540, 720, Flat 5, Flat 3, fakie 900,

fishbrain, True Xgrind, and 270 topacid

He also used the whole ramp from roll-in and extension to the bowl.

It was a huge event, bigger than any in the past and he was pleased with his skating

which is what really matters.

 

Venice Beach, June 2004

Thumper was just in the Core Tour Venice Beach X-Games Qualifier

where he placed 4th. He was the only one qualified from the event

(the top 3 finishers there had already secured their spots).

It was the only qualifier in the US and 8 of the ten spots are now filled.

Thumper is the only qualified American.

The last two spots for X-Games will be earned in competitions in England and France.

 

Contact Thumper Nagasako

hifocused@gmail.com