The Jackalope Festival is an event that's truly larger than life. Were you there? To relive this action and fun packed weekend one more time, here is a look back on Jackalope 2017!

Enjoy!

Photo credit: Dan Mathieu

There is so much to see and do at Jackalope, it's hard to fit everything into one day. Fortunately, the festival is a weekend long! In addition to the main program, including the Jackalope World Cup of Skateboarding, demonstrations of all kinds including a coveted vert ramp session with Tony Hawk and his friends, motocross, base jumping, slackline, rock climbing, freestyle skateboarding and BMX as well as many others, we were treated to a weekend full of diversified activities, delicious food from the fancy food trucks and pure fun to make us forget about the heat that blasted over the Olympic Stadium last weekend. Thanks to Micah Desforges and the entire Jackalope crew for bringing us an action sports festival that will be hard to forget.

Photo credit: Dan Mathieu

Friday

It was on Friday, June 18th, that the Jackalope Festival was officially launched and for the occasion, the guys went all in! At 5 pm, we opened the ceremony with a traditional Game of skate followed by the now iconic Four Loko challenge, which was in fact totally crazy. After seeing Julien Gagnon destroy the transition part of the course with brain melting maneuvers for a $1000 purse, we can confirm that he is definitely Loco in the coco!

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Even though some threatening clouds were showing up at some point on the first night of Jackalope, Mother Nature came through with a perfect weather that streched throughout the weekend. Despite the good weather, there was a storm of activity going on in the Esplanade Financière Sun Life. A storm that was intensified by the base-jumping competition's first jump, qualifying for the climbing competition, slack line classes and more. After only one evening, the Jackalope Fest was already very lit.

Saturday

Saturday was high in action and strong emotions! On the program for the day, climbing competitions, freestyle skateboarding and BMX demo, qualifications for Jackalope Skateboarding World Cup, fixed gear, base jumping and last but not least, a live vert ramp demonstration by none other than Tony Hawk and his friends! This was a moment that would not only be written in our heads forever, but also in history.

Photo credit: Dan Mathieu

Attracting more than 10,000 spectators to the Esplanade Financière Sun Life, the ramp demonstration remains the highlight of this epic day. Even of the whole weekend! In front of the dense crowd watching from the bottom of the ramp, Tony Hawk, Elliott Sloan, Lizzie Armanto and several other professional ramp skateboarders showed us what they were capable of with breathtaking maneuvers done one after another for more than one hour. It was beautiful to see. The double with the Birdman flying over Lizzie Armando was especially cool to see.

Photo credit: Dan Mathieu

Sunday

Even though Saturday was difficult to beat, Sunday was just as insane and thrilling as the previous, even more. While a number of activities were still taking place on the site, this day was mainly dedicated to the Jackalope women's and men's Skateboarding World Cup, the flagship event of Jackalope Fest.

Photo credit: Dan Mathieu

To start, let's talk about women skateboarding. Wow! Just wow! The girl skaters were just on fire! They showed us what they were capable of with maneuvers worthy of the best skateboarders of this world. Congratulations to our beloved Annie Puglia, who brought home a well-deserved second place, but who unfortunately got dethroned by Mariah Duran, from New Mexico. With tricks like a Fs Feeble on the rail and a hardflip over the bump to bar, the high-caliber competition regular really stood out from the bunch. In third position, the incredible Breana Geering, who unfortunately did not land all her tricks, but who showed us an impressive amount of technical skill.

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Time for the weekend’s highlight: The Jackalope Mens World Cup Skateboard qualifications and finals. Let us tell you that the qualifying round was far from easy for the judges, who had to select only 10 skaters out of thirty or so guys, who were all extremely talented. In between the qualifications and the finals, we even got to see a dirt bike jumping demonstration, something we don’t get to experience every day. Even though what we were most interested in was obviously the skateboard contest, dirt biking was really impressive. Another reason why Jackalope is so sick, there’s so much impressive stuff going down in one weekend it’s insane.

And now, the moment we all expected, the grand finale! Once the sun was down, a cool breeze started to cool down the air as the finalists were giving all they had on the course. After a fierce battle between some of the best skaters in the world, including Greg Lutzka, TJ Rogers, Jon Cosentino and many others, it was the young Ontarian Jayden Bono who took the coveted first position with a breathtaking performance.

Photo credit: Dan Mathieu

Executing the toughest maneuvers in skateboarding like a 180 switch crooked grind on the flat rail to drop and a fs 270 lipslide down the down rail, Mr. Bono's victory was a bit unpredictable, but still well deserved. In second place, Jon Cosentino, who showed quite an impressive amount of style on his board all day. With an extremely refined bag of tricks, the Toronto native gave the impression that the ultra technical stuff he was putting down was in fact super easy. Finally, Martin Pek of Czech Republic took third position with fluid and solid maneuvers including a nollie big spin bs lip slide on the A frame rail and an impressive bs tailside on a barrier that was not even part of the park! In our opinion, it was the trick of the day!

Crédit photo: Dan Mathieu

What a weekend! If you couldn’t make it to the 2017 edition of the Jackalope Festival, we strongly advise you to keep your agenda empty for next year's event. You will not regret it, garanteed!