New recruit Liam Pace recently headed over to Tallin, Estonia to compete in Simple Session against the world's best skaters. Liam proved he has what it takes, when he not only qualified first going into finals but then took the overall win, taking home first place. We caught up with Liam after the contest to hear his thoughts. Check it out below! 

Hey Liam, congrats on the win! How does it feel?

It feels unreal to get out to Estonia to skate of all places and to take home the win on top of that. I was stoked to even skate because of a pretty gnarly slam from the first day of practice.

Did you have any idea you could win this?

I thought in the back of my head that if I nailed a really good run I had a chance of making the podium, I didn’t really think about winning, I was having too much fun on the course.

After qualifying first, was there more pressure heading into finals?

I got kind of nervous at first because I skated pretty hard in qualifiers and I knew I had to step it up but I didn’t know how I was going to do that, I was pretty stoked for a 1 minute run instead of a 2 minute jam because the course was huge and that’s a long time to have to skate. When it came time for warm ups for finals I just started having fun with some harder tricks I hadn’t thought about and just had fun skating as fast as possible.

Is this your first time to Estonia? What do you think?

This was my first time to Estonia and it was incredible, other than the freezing weather. The course was huge and mixed street and big park transitions which was something I’ve been looking forward to skating since I was little watching the old X Games park contests. The people that put on the event were super nice and hospitable and the crowd brought some serious energy to add to the contest! I can’t wait for next year!!!

What’s next for you?

What’s next for me is a super long journey home and then back to the lab to work on a few new tricks I’ve been working on. As far as the next big contest coming up should be the Vans Pool Party in LA or hopefully a world skate event sanctioned for the Olympics. I can’t wait for the next contest to happen. I’m also super stoked and fortunate to have got a full paid trip and invite to the rollercoaster event in Munich this year. I watched that event last year and it looks like a blast!