Transworld Skateboarding reports (See how I gave you guys credit there? It doesn’t even hurt.) that skateboarding will likely not make it into the 2012 Olympics. The got it from a subscription only web site about the business of the Olympics called Around the Rings.
Plans to bring skateboarding to the program for the 2012 Olympics are headed for a crash landing, sources tell Around the Rings…
…As part of a play to make maximum use of the BMX half pipe track, UCI was also willing to consider bringing skateboarding into the federation for a double-barreled shot at attracting younger sports fans for the Olympics.
UCI sports director Olivier Queguiner, who met recently with IOC officials to discuss the situation, now tells Around the Rings that the “no decision about skateboard” will take place during the UCI Congress in Stuttgart later this month. A vote of the UCI Congress is a must to bring a new discipline into the sport of cycling. Failure to act this year effectively kills the chance of adding skateboarding to London.
Around the Rings also claims that most pro skateboarders would rather have street skating in the Olympics instead of a vert event, I’m guessing because there are about 100 times more street skating pros in the first place. Regardless of your stance on having skateboarding in the Olympics, or your skateboarding terrain of choice, it’s kind of obvious that a halfpipe event will fit in better in terms of the whole Olympic style spectacle and judging. There are no events where competitors can use completely different terrain and be judged on the difficulty and style of their maneuvers. Street skating would be too hard for the uninitiated viewer to comprehend, unless they turned it into a gymnastics like exercise where there was one single runway and an obstacle at the end for every competitor to hit, as in the case with the vault in gymnastics. I’m pretty sure nobody wants to see or partake in that, although it’s a pretty funny idea for a video. “And here comes the dismount from the 15 step rail… Oooooh! It looks like he broke his ankle. He didn’t fall completely off his board, but “rolling up the windows” is certainly going to subtract some points. Ryan Sheckler has left the arena crying again, what a brave competitor.”
Look for the furor to start up again for the 2016 Olympics. Yes, this is one of the lamest intro graphics I’ve done. There’s a host of links to now, mostly moot articles on skateboarding in the Olympics after the jump.
Here’s an anti-skateboarding opinion piece in Around the Rings that doesn’t require a subscription.
Trick Moves for Skateboard Betray IOC Pledges to Sports Federations –
Around the Rings
“Transparency appears to be an illusory ideal for the IOC, as evidenced by the machinations it seems willing to pursue to bring skateboard into the Summer Olympics as an unlikely discipline of cycling.”
Free Spirits Wonder How Olympics Will Treat Them
New York Times – United States
“It appears that skateboarding and BMX freestyle will be contested under the cycling banner…”
Skateboarders divided over Games
Taipei Times –
“Reaction in the skateboarding community has ranged from joy to skepticism to downright contempt, and stirred memories of the Olympic debut of snowboarding nearly 10 years ago.”
Skaters not on board
Village Voice.com.au – Rozelle, New South Wales,Australia
“Skateboarding continues to draw more and more devotees, but as Nick
Moncrieff-Hill discovers, many local enthusiasts want to keep it a DIY
hobby rather than …”
Skateboarding’s slippery slope to the rostrum
Telegraph.co.uk – United Kingdom
“Recently, the men in suits of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) proposed turning skateboarding into an Olympic sport for the London Olympics of 2012 …”
IOC relaxes rules for new sports
Sydney Morning Herald – Sydney,New South Wales, Australia
There are moves to include Skateboarding at the London Olympics. Skateboarding could be fast-tracked if they compete as a cycling discipline and not as a …”
The word on the kerb is no to skateboarding at the Olympics (Kerb! Haw! Haw!)
New Zealand Herald – New Zealand
Another skater, 25-year-old Todd Henry, a temp at Chubb Security, felt skateboarding should be left as it is. “It’s not structured and that’s one of the …
Games gold leaves some skaters cold
The Age – Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
“AUSTRALIA’S skateboarding community is divided — and it has nothing to do
with an irate priest. The International Olympic Committee is pushing to
have …”
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