New York Times article on Slalom

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/sports/18skateboard.html?_r=2&...

and the full text for those not wishing to link

July 18, 2009
Graying Skateboarders Hope to Revive Slalom
By MATT HIGGINS
In 1975, Gary Fluitt was 10 years old and cruising alone on his skateboard down the main drag in Los Osos, along California’s central coast, when a man he did not know pulled up in a 1967 green Ford Thunderbird with a white interior.

He said, “ ‘Hey, man, want to go to a skateboard race?’ ” Fluitt recalled.

Fluitt acknowledged that more than 30 years ago, childhood and skateboarding were perhaps more innocent. So he climbed into the car and was taken across town, where he watched competitors boom down a street with a steep grade, weaving among cones in an attempt to post the fastest time. For Fluitt, the race had the right ingredients: speed, excitement and a little danger.

“I was hooked,” he said about his first glimpse of slalom skateboarding.

Now 45, Fluitt finished second in the masters class of the tight slalom at the Seismic United States Nationals of slalom skateboarding last weekend in Lafayette, Colo.

In a sport that celebrates youth, slalom skateboarders are more likely to be middle-aged; there are about 500 active practitioners in the United States. With virtually no news media coverage for slalom’s roughly 75 races each year, it is one of the most obscure disciplines in skateboarding.

More than 70 skaters from the United States, Australia, France, Germany and Canada are competing for little more than bragging rights at the world championships of slalom skateboarding, which started Friday in Hood River, Ore.

It was not always this way. In the 1970s, slalom was one of the most popular forms of skateboarding, and its fastest racers regularly appeared on the covers of skateboarding magazines.

“What appeals to me about racing is that it’s objective,” said Fluitt, who works for Sun Microsystems in Colorado. “It’s not a judged sport. You race against a clock.”

Many believe the sport itself is racing against time. With their ranks rapidly graying, slalom skaters have tried hard to lure a new generation. Their most promising project involves a slalom program set up this summer at the Woodward camp in central Pennsylvania, where thousands of young skateboarders hone their moves each summer. With two instructors and six courses, the program can accommodate 10 to 15 campers daily. Virtually all of them have never seen slalom before.

“The response has been very good, not only with the kids, but you have to have a good response with the staff and pros,” said Gary Ream, a co-owner of the Woodward camps. “It has been very good.”

With ramps, street obstacles and innovative training devices like trampolines, foam pits and ramps with soft landings, the Woodward camps have been launching pads for many of the stars of skateboarding, BMX freestyle, freestyle motocross and snowboarding.

Can courses at Woodward do the same for slalom? Dan Gesmer hopes so. He is the owner of Seismic Skate Systems, an equipment manufacturer that provided specialized wheels and trucks for the slalom boards at Woodward and that is the title sponsor of the world championships.

“The Woodward program is important,” Gesmer said. “If a younger generation of skaters doesn’t know slalom and downhill are even possible, they’re not going to be interested in it.”

Spreading the word often falls to the racers themselves. Jason Mitchell, 42, a two-time overall world slalom champion from Colorado, has introduced children as young as 7 to slalom at a local Y.M.C.A., where he is a skateboarding instructor. And Judi Oyama, 49, a mother of two from Santa Cruz, Calif., who won a world championship in hybrid slalom in 2003, has taught slalom skateboarding courses through her local parks and recreation department.

“An evangelist, that’s what the older guys have become,” said Jack Smith, 52, the driver of the Thunderbird who introduced Fluitt to slalom 34 years ago. “There’s been generations of skaters that have no idea what slalom is.”

After peaking in the mid-1970s, slalom was shunted aside by skateboarding magazines and equipment manufacturers in favor of nascent vertical riding, where skaters carved empty swimming pools and pulled aerial maneuvers. By the early 1980s, slalom competition had mostly disappeared in the United States.

In 2001, Smith used the Internet to track down former slalom enthusiasts and organized the International Slalom Skateboarding Association world slalom championships in Morro Bay, Calif. More than 70 competitors showed up, from 11 countries. Many of them had not raced in 20 years.

“Some of the former greats came out of the woodwork,” Smith said. “It was like a reunion of the tribe.”

With new, improved equipment, they were faster, too. With four classifications featuring different course setups, racers can travel at speeds up to 40 miles an hour and pass five cones per second.

But the equipment, which is specialized and can cost $500 or more for a complete setup, has been a barrier to entry. And so has finding suitable roads on which to practice without encountering cars.

Still, in the nine years since Smith reorganized the world championships, a crew of younger racers has emerged. Twenty competitors at the world championships are under 18. The new generation tends to come from enclaves in California, the Pacific Northwest and Colorado.

Martin Reaves, 18, of Boulder, Colo., began racing in 2007. He finished second to Mitchell in the hybrid slalom pro class at the national championships last week and won the pro class in giant slalom Friday at the world championships. This summer he will compete in the Czech Republic, where slalom is more competitive and popular.

Four years ago, Reaves had never heard of slalom.

“I would have never found the sport without one of my friends showing me,” Reaves said. “I was kind of lucky that I found it.”