IRA's Liquid X Freestyle wails on 2.2 million in Chicago CHICAGO, IL - The Chicago Air and Water Show drew over 2.2 MILLION live in two days! Our morning audiences (9:00am) were over 450,000 and 650,000 back to back, with the top end 2.2 million at our 4:00pm encore each day. These numbers exclude the Friday practice of over 200,000. Your support has helped keep alive the last viable bastion of professional freestyle in North America. All five networks and super stations carried coverage of the Big Air Competition/Exhibition. Newspaper coverage in copies topped 1,000,000. Network viewers combined topped 3,450,000. WGN, ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX as well as CLTV and WGBO local broadcast stations covered the action. Awards were presented to: Best Wipeout: Mack Shwab hit the bottom of Lake Michigan (again!) and sunk, AGAIN! He returned for the 4 o'clock show Saturday and rode again Sunday, almost dethroning the Coolest Move winner with a huge 15-20 foot boat throw. Coolest Move: Joe Eckert came out of his ski on a huge barrelroll, returned to the tray, landed, and launched off the backside of the wake to go back to back barrelrolling to the Coolest Move trophy. Big Air Champion: Gary Burtka pulls down first place with consistent one and no handed barrelrolls, boat releases and inverts. The smoothest and cleanest riding of the weekend by a comfortable margin. Second place Mike Hoffman returns to action with some huge barrelrolls with tons of height and distance. Day one saw a snapped handle poll and cracked inner hood only to be overcome in a furious finish on day two. Third place Tommy Nuttall drew huge volumes of applause from the sweltering throbbing masses both days. Riding his favorite Seadoo, Tommy was all over it both days with another fine performance. A Special Decade of Excellance Award was presented to Michael Niksic for his work behind and in front of the public. His efforts have held together in an important way this huge event over the last ten years. Breaking in his new Head Enterprises boat just in time for the event, "El Chef" drew huge fan response at the 4:00 Sunday encore with an emotional and slick performance. Other highlights included Greg Brocks huge inverts on Sunday, received by a very loud new found fan base numbering hundreds of thousands. Rose Nuttall's flashy showy performances at North Avenue Beach all three days. Kahn Funk's weekend was cut short by an apparent electrical problem, but Saturday his watertime was filled with some very tall barrelrolls and deep invert/sub combinations. Each Day Liquid X had the asset of 40-foot cruisers coming out of Diversey Harbor in Chicago and laying down some incredible consistent deep wakes for all phases of the competition. Burtka also launched some big aerials with his helmet cam on, as he taped the action from this unique position. The riders gave out literally thousands of autographs, thousands of posters, flags, squeeze bottles and stickers among other goodies. Special visits to the handicapped seating sections were on the agenda as well. Mike Remar fine-tuned the huge audience both days. His first time at the event, he summed up his view of the show in one word, "AWESOME". Many thanks to Wamiltons, Gath Helmets, Scott Gear, Hydro Turf, Det-Chi Video, Casa Nostra Bakery, Tony Past and Subway, Corona Beer, Gem Promotions, The Mayor's Office of Special Events, M.T. Foodservice Co., 42n Latitude, Metromix, The Chicago Sun Times, The Chicago Police Marine Division, The US Coast Guard, and the International Racing Association.