OCEAN CITY – Ocean City officials “dropped in” yesterday morning with Dew Tour athletes to kick off the Pantech Beach Championships.

Equipped with miniature finger trick boards, the Ocean City Mayor and City Council, along with Dew Tour officials and athletes Jamie Bestwick, Bob Burnquist, and Bucky Lasek gathered on the skate vert and let them ride down the ramp to start off the second year of the competition in Ocean City.

“We are very excited to be back in Ocean City for the second year and I am happy to be standing here on the stage and see people who made that happen,” Vice President of Events at Alli Sports Chris Prybylo. “We could have not had a more successful event, great crowds, great coverage and overall the highest attended event in the history of the Dew Tour last year. So we are thrilled to be back this year.”

“On behalf of the Mayor and City Council and all of the citizens of Ocean City, welcome back for your second year of the Dew Tour here in Ocean City,” Meehan said. “As you described, last year’s event was a success and we are looking forward to four days right out here on the beach overlooking the Atlantic Ocean with great activities and with some of the greatest athletes in the world to bring everybody here to Ocean City.”

The Dew Tour is located on the beach downtown and the events, all of which are free, are scheduled through Sunday, Aug. 19.

On Thursday, the FFT Skateboard Vert Finals took place, followed by the Skateboard Bowl semi-final, FFT BMX Park Final, BMX Vert Final Round I, Skateboard Bowl Legends Final and the GoDaddy.com Surf at 8:30 p.m.

Today, Friday Aug. 17, the BMX Park Preliminaries start the day off from 3:30-5:30 p.m., followed by the BMX Vert Final Round II 7:30-8 p.m. and Skateboard Vert semi-final 9-10 p.m. The Dew Tour Experience will be open noon-7 p.m.

Saturday will begin with BMX Mega 2.0 Final 1-1:45 p.m. followed by the Skateboard Vert Final 2-3 p.m. and BMX Park Semi-Final 5:30-7 p.m. The Dew Tour Experience will be open from noon to 8 p.m.

The last day, Sunday, Aug. 19, will begin with BMX Park Final 1:45-2:15 p.m., followed by the Skateboard Bowl Final, 2:45-4 p.m., BMX Flatland, 4:30-5:15 p.m., and the last event will be Skateboard Mega 2.0, 6-7 p.m. The Dew Tour Experience will be open noon-6 p.m.

Top confirmed athletes include Baltimore native Bucky Lasek, skate vert dominator Pierre-Luc Gagnon and BMX legend Jamie Bestwick.

According to Alli Sports, in addition to Lasek and Gagnon, the vert ramp will host Pedro Barros, Mitchie Brusco, Bob Burnquist, Sandro Dias, Tom Schaar and Elliott Sloan.  

At the Mega 2.0 ramp skate prodigy Schaar, the first person to land a 1080, as well as Brusco will compete along with Burnquist, Gagnon and Jagger Eaton.

Additionally, this year’s Dew Tour features lots of live music, beginning at Thursday night’s GoDaddy Surf Session and running through Saturday night.

Music starts again on Friday at 9 p.m. with Theophilus followed by Lupe Fiasco 10 p.m. On Saturday at 3 p.m. Rites of Ashes takes the stage with The Perfects to follow at 3:45 p.m. and Vital at 4:30 p.m. Saturday night will have DallasK performing at 8 p.m., Two Fresh at 8:45 p.m., and Wolfgang Gartner at 9:30 p.m.