Rookie Fest Elgg 2026: 3 winners, 9 tickets to Slovenia — and 11 days to get ready

On Saturday, September 12, 2026, more than 30 skaters under 21 took over the Elgg Skatepark, in the canton of Zurich, for the Swiss stop of the World Rookie Tour. Three winners came out of it: Kevin Loi in Rookies U21, Fabian Rechsteiner in Groms U16, Viktorie Marešová in the girls division. Behind them, nine spots for the world finals in Celje — and the organizer only put out three names.

The three winners at Elgg

In Rookies U21 — skaters born between 2005 and 2010 — Kevin Loi came out on top. He’s from La Tour-de-Peilz, on the Vaud side of Lake Geneva. A French-speaking Swiss kid taking a German-speaking stop doesn’t happen every year: between Vevey and Zurich there’s a three-hour train ride and two scenes that almost never cross paths.

In Groms U16 — 2011 and later, so 15 years old max — Fabian Rechsteiner, from St. Gallen, put down what the organizers called the best showing of the day in his division. On the girls side, everyone rode in one division: Viktorie Marešová took the win.

• Kevin LoiRookie U21

  La Tour-de-Peilz, canton of Vaud — took the day’s headline division

• Fabian RechsteinerGrom U16

  St. Gallen — born in 2011 or later, so 15 at the most

• Viktorie MarešováGirls

  Girls rode as one division — top step at Elgg

• Micha KownerBest Trick

  Zurich — took the best trick jam on the kinked rail

One thing worth saying straight up: no scores were released, and second and third place don’t show up anywhere. The official World Rookie Tour recap gives you the winners, the podium shots, and nothing else. No judges’ sheet, no full results. We’re not about to make up the six missing names just to fill the page. The official recap is right here — go look, it really is that short.

Qualifiers: three minutes, two at a time

The contest kicks off at 1 p.m. Qualifiers run as a three-minute jam, two skaters in the park at the same time. You’re not out there alone against a clock: you’re riding next to somebody else, crossing paths, giving way, going again. Judges are watching creativity, consistency, style. The top eight out of each group move on to finals.

Finals: two runs, one last trick

Finals at 3:30 p.m.: two one-minute runs, best of the two counts, plus one last trick. The format is brutal in how simple it is. Blow one run and you’re not done — you’ve still got another. Blow both, and your whole day comes down to a single closing trick. Anybody who’s been there knows the feeling: that last try where the entire park stops rolling to watch you.

What’s really on the line that Saturday isn’t a trophy. It’s a plane ticket. The top 3 in each division punches a spot at the World Rookie Tour world finals — the only circuit that flies 13-year-olds to Slovenia for free because they rode well one afternoon outside Zurich. For a lot of them, it’s the first international trip of their skate life. You can read it on their faces when the results drop, way more than on any results sheet.

The kinked rail, last act of the day

Before the awards, the crew threw down a Best Trick on the park’s kinked rail — the one that changes angle halfway down, the one you stare at for ten minutes before you commit. Groms and Rookies all mixed together, no divisions, no clock. You pull your best trick, that’s it.

It was Micha Kowner, from Zurich, who took it. The organizer doesn’t say which trick he landed — one more thing we’d love to know and don’t. What we do know is that the Best Trick at a Rookie Fest is usually the moment the whole park circles up and loses it. No judges right then. Just 30 people deciding together that yeah, that was the one.

You can picture the vibe: 15 francs to enter, cash or app, an open session from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. where everybody rides together before anyone gets sorted out, awards at 5:15 p.m., and an hour of hanging around the park until 6:30 p.m. A September Saturday in a Zurich-area village of 4,000 people. It’s tiny. That’s exactly why it works.

The whole day on video, shot on site

No scores, but we got the next best thing: the footage. The World Rookie Tour put the official video of the day online. The jams, the finals, the Best Trick on the rail — it’s all in there, and two minutes is enough to see the real level in these U16 and U21 divisions.

Nine tickets, three names: who’s actually going to Slovenia?

Here’s the clearest answer anyone can give. The rules are plain: the top 3 in each division qualifies for the world finals. Three ranked podiums at Elgg — girls, Groms U16, Rookies U21 — so nine spots handed out that Saturday.

Of those nine, three are confirmed and public: Kevin Loi, Fabian Rechsteiner and Viktorie Marešová. The other six exist, they’ve got their ticket, they’re crossing Europe in eleven days — and nobody outside the Elgg park knows who they are. That’s the real hole in this day, and it’s not on the skaters: it’s on a 300-word recap posted two days later with no results sheet attached.

Sounds like a detail. It isn’t. A 14-year-old who takes 3rd at an international stop — that’s the line he shows a shop, a brand, his parents to justify the next trip. With no published results, that line doesn’t exist anywhere. The Portugal Rookie Fest 2026, meanwhile, put out scores down to the hundredth — 81.70 for the winner. Same circuit, two stops, two completely different standards.

One more oddity we’re flagging because we saw it with our own eyes: the August announcement called it the 7th edition of the Swiss stop, while the September recap says “third edition”. Same website, three weeks apart. We’re not picking one: here are both numbers and the source.

Celje, eleven days out

The World Rookie Skateboard Finals go down in Celje, Slovenia, September 25–27, 2026. Eleven days after Elgg. The Swiss qualifiers will run into the ones from Portugal, Italy and the rest of the tour — and the level is nothing like a national stop.

That’s where the real question hits for the French-speaking scene. Kevin Loi is coming out of La Tour-de-Peilz, a town of 12,000 on Lake Geneva. There’s no pipeline behind him, no development program, no national selection — there’s a 15-franc contest and a train to catch. In France, dozens of skaters the same age are riding at exactly that level with zero tour stops within 300 miles. That’s what’s really playing out at Elgg, and that’s what we should be paying attention to.

Next chapter runs September 25–27. Nine Swiss skaters will be there. Three of them have names.

Ever skated a contest where the results never got posted? Tell us in the comments ↓

We’re following the whole rookie circuit this season: the Damn Am San Diego 2026 results, the UK championships and the rest of the season’s contests are all on nosk8.com.

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