The future of high level racing in australia?

Replies to This Discussion

Premium MemberPermalink Reply by Jacko on February 19, 2013 at 5:34

if people want to make a living from downhill skateboarding, the sport needs to grow to the highest level, it needs to go to something like the olympics. lets face it, how in the fuck are people meant to make a wage from downhill skateboarding at the moment? Local shops are failing because kids cant keep their dollars in the country coz they are tightasses, funding for events and even team riders are getting cut, people are loosing out on oportunities. Even board manufactures (and the biggest ones in the world) are able to make some payments to riders but they just dont have the funding to keep people on 'professional level'. at the moment if u call urself a full time pro that means u got no job and ur scraping by with the small dollars u earn from skating. If it were to blow up to such a huge level i.e olympics that would provide SO many oportunities for the sport in all forms. Skaters get taken seriously as pro athletes, outside sponsors come in and provide dollars for peeps to keep riding and promoting the sport, they sponsor events and become involved, then how would someone qualify for the olympics? they would need national competitions and more local events to seed out the best from each country to put together teams. Now if u went to your local council and said "im interested in doing a race on skateboards for me and the community on ur road, just so we can see who is the fastest dude and have some fun" you would get a slightly different reaction than "im interested in having an event that can let people qualify for the ma-fukkin olympic games dude, we gonna represent the country against the rest of the world for this".

sorry to completley go off the rails on this topic but people are pretty blind to whats in front of them at the moment

ASRA AdminPermalink Reply by bernie on February 19, 2013 at 9:25

Jacko, Thanks for the kind words.
Dani, I am not grumpy at you.

Me? Downhill? Bahahahahahahaha, the closest I got to skating at Bathurst was driving a shuttle bus!

 

As to one of the road blocks in the way of getting to the Olympics

Read this http://sba.org.au/About-Us/about-us  and look at how much money they get from the government ($736,000 with $475,000 going to skateboarding ), and how they (claim to)represent US, nationally and at the Aust Olympic Committee. 

 

QUOTE SbA "
Is SbA a part of the current push to get skateboarding at the Olympics?
No. "

 

Might be time to start a letter writing campaign to Skate-Australia and the minister of sport to get SbA to start promoting skateboarding as an Olympic sport.  It's an election year so your local MP's are ready to promise almost anything!

 

The first problem with promoting skateboarding in  the Olympics is defining "skateboarding"

Is it the subjectively "judged-by-cuzza" artistic pursuits of "twigg-flipping", bowl & vert which could potentially sit very nicely with Gymnastics (minus the leotards, long ribbon, and opera music......jeeze....I can be a bitch to the twigg-flippers!)

or

Is it "judged by a clock" down-hill, slalom or skater-cross disciplines, which sits well with BMX, or track&field?

Most of the uninvolved, commentators and self pronounced "voices of skateboarding" and SbA only define the sport in the first category, where as the second category is actually original forms of skateboarding competition which date back to the 1970's. 

Note that "our Voice", the Board of Skateboard Australia are, in the majority, sitting firmly in the "artistic" camp.

 

Premium MemberPermalink Reply by Dani on February 25, 2013 at 4:21

To be a professional it has to be your profession. Skating is far from my profession, I work hard to pay for my travels and my skating. So no, I am not a professional skateboarder and very few people in this world can say that they are one, Short of Ryan Sheckler and his homie G's! I skate for fun, not for serious. I race for closed roads and good times with mates, not for points. So no, I don't take it seriously. All due respect for Bernie, no offense intended, and to Johnny too! 

Jacko said:

i would like to see downhill skateboarding in the olympics. maybe then we can be taken seriously as athletes to the rest of the world and will be granted more opportunities to do what we love to do. as a professional athlete and someone who wants to do well in their field, i would not be the one to diss skateboarding in the olympics. lets face it Dani, the only people who dont want downhill skating in the olympics are the ones that wanna smoke weed, its so sad. nothing wrong with a lil bit of hootch here and there and im not going to say im mr clean i love a beer and a burn dont get me wrong, but if ur serious about ur sport its no a hard choice to make hey. do you wanna fart around as a stoner and never make much money from your 'job as a skater' and continue to just be a stoner who lurks at outlaw races and shitty IGSA events? or do you wanna be a somebody in this world and try to make a difference?   ....who says outlaw racing and skateboard racing in general cant co-exist with olympic skating?

sound so me you dont take it as seriously as some might... i hope you dont call yourself a professional. If you paid much attention to those who actually win and act professionally you would notice that barely any of them would actually touch any substance before, or during an event, myself included. Those who take it seriously wont be up till all hours of the morning raging getting wasted because they want to perform at their best. Saying that 'most downhill skaters take drugs while racing' is a bad label for those who actually take this sport seriously ya know. maybe you'll take it seriously one day too eh.

Also, Berni is the man, hes always trying to help and is a great bloke, im pretty sure he wasnt dissing on outlaw races at all and im pretty sure he's all for them, but also has his eyes on the prize for the bigger goals as well. wanna know something else? he does it for the PEOPLE, not himself. Not to diss bernie or anything like that but lets face it he aint gonna be competing in epic downhill races against the world's best, but he put in the hard hard yards for folks like you and me to have a good time. that deserves a lil respect dont ya think?

Dani said:

. I would also venture a rough estimate that the VERY large majority of downhill skaters from around the world (I have travelled to a lot of countries and skated with a lot of different people) do not want races to be at an olympic level. The one race in the world that was trying it's hardest to be that kind of event was Teolo in Italy and that was probably the worst race on the whole world cup tour. Skaters (yup, even downhill racers) are simple folk who (and people may not approve but hey, it's true) like to smoke weed before, during and after the race and the final dubes will be smoked at an epic party with a shit load of alcohol. Olympics aren't really our thing (as a majority). 

 

Premium MemberPermalink Reply by Dani on February 25, 2013 at 4:51

There is still an issue with snowboarding in the olympics and many would even say that the ''worlds top snowboarders'' according to Olympic results, are actually far from being the best in the world when you watch private events. Skateboarders will never be respected as athletes by anyone else but other skaters or people tied into the skateboarding scene.

 The thing with skateboarding and in my opinion, one of the coolest things I have noticed about skateboarding is that there are no idol fans. It's easy to find a football fan who doesn't play football, he just watches. Same goes with car racing, soccer, rugby, basketball. All these sports have die hard fans who never actually ''give er a go''. Skateboarding isn't like that, you can't be a fan of skateboarding and not skateboard. I suppose you could, but it doesn't seem to happen. I dunno if I have ever met someone who said their favourite sport was skateboarding but I never actually skateboard. That makes skateboarding's potential fan base very limited. There are no rules about it I suppose but it is something that is worth taking into consideration when talking about the future of skateboarding.  

ASRA AdminPermalink Reply by Bugs on February 25, 2013 at 9:30

You'd get idol fans if skateboarding was on TV three days a week like the football. Even if it was on once every four years you'd still have a few idol fans in the same way that a lot of Olympic sports do.

The potential fan base is big. I've heard that the men's half pipe is the highest rating event in the US  for the Winter Olympics.

ASRA AdminPermalink Reply by bernie on February 25, 2013 at 11:32

Dani said:

The thing with skateboarding and in my opinion, one of the coolest things I have noticed about skateboarding is that there are no idol fans.....

Skateboarding isn't like that, you can't be a fan of skateboarding and not skateboard

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WOW....lucky you prefaced all that with "in my opinion", otherwise,
how would we explain the huge sales of the "Tony Hawk" video game....played by you guessed it....people that don't skate?
and
how exactly  would we explain to the several generations of skaters before you, who for whatever reason don't skate anymore, that unfortunately they can't technically be fans of skateboarding?

 

In my humble and very flawed opinion, and without resorting to the "back-hander" prefaces of "All due respect" or "just sayin".....

The biggest road block to skateboarding in the olympics is SKATEBOARDERS!

Premium MemberPermalink Reply by Jacko on February 25, 2013 at 11:37

Dani, numerous times ive seen you refer to yourself as a 'professional' and someone who takes skateboard racing 'seriously' so im quite confused... why are you sponsored? why were you trying so hard to be sponsored? it just doesnt make sense to me, you say one thing then say another... please stop representing Australian Skateboarding racing... your making the rest of us look bad

Also, my mother is an 'idol fan'. you gonna diss old mumsie? i think not... there are so many opportunities out there and so much growth going on right before your eyes and your too stubborn and single minded you cant see, your the reason why we dont progress, your views are so negative and stuck in the underground that you will never rise to the top. im sorry but there are a lot of people out there who aspire to be more than just 'skate punks smoking weed and having fun', there are people who do take it seriously and actually have the opportunities to make a living off of skateboarding, i cant believe you used to be one of them and now trash talk it.

like bernie said, your lucky that you started that with 'in my opinion', and hes very right about the only road block to skateboarding progressing is skateboarders themselves.

Dani said:

To be a professional it has to be your profession. Skating is far from my profession, I work hard to pay for my travels and my skating. So no, I am not a professional skateboarder and very few people in this world can say that they are one, Short of Ryan Sheckler and his homie G's! I skate for fun, not for serious. I race for closed roads and good times with mates, not for points. So no, I don't take it seriously. All due respect for Bernie, no offense intended, and to Johnny too! 

Premium MemberPermalink Reply by Dani on February 25, 2013 at 12:31

I played FIFA on playstation Bernie but that doesn't make me a fan of soccer, just a fan of nerding out on console games. I did buy the Tony Hawks game though because I could grind power lines in it which I still can't do in real life. Everyone you mentioned has a tie to skating though. Jacko's mumsie (who I would never diss, haha) is tied to it through Jacko. People who used to skate but can't anymore... Well, they used to skate. You have to admit that it is extremely rare to meet someone who isn't a skater or isn't tied to skating through a friend or family that is a fan of skateboarding and would go out of their way to watch Bondi Bowlarama, or a street comp at the park. Downhill could be different because of the racing aspect maybe? Stats might be easy to get though, what was that mega street comp they had a few months back in the states. Was all over the TV and shit. Wonder if they publish audience stats for that?

Jacko, I have called myself a professional skater to the media because I feel it has slightly more sway than ''stoney kind who rides boards often''. Any media rep with the faintest grasp of the English language could easily say ''do you work a normal job?'' I would say yes and they would call me out and say ''well you aint a professional then. Like I said, unless you are feeding yourself, paying your bills and travel expenses and what not, you aint a professional. Longboarding has a lot of semi professionals which some years I might classed as perhaps? I don't represent Australian downhill, I happen to be an Aussie who skates but I represent myself and my sponsors. If people see me as repping Aussie downhill that's cool, but I don't aim to be that. I do happen to think I represent myself, my roots and (out of no choice of my own) my country, very well though. I am sponsored because I live a skaters life and that's what my sponsors are interested in. There are plenty of folk out there who skate better, more aggressively and more competitively than I do for sure. My lifestyle choice and community involvement is why brands have chosen to support me. I tried to get sponsored because I knew I wanted to travel non stop and skate non stop but needed some assistance. I looked around until I found the right company for me (Rayne Motherfucking Longboards!) and I stuck with them. Since I signed up with Rayne I have not been seeking or in need of any more sponsorship. So far I have been constantly on the move and skating new places with new people since 2009. Thanks for asking though!

Premium MemberPermalink Reply by haggy on February 27, 2013 at 20:55

If snowboarding's path to the Olympics is anything to go by, then the lesson to learn is that unless the racing and broader skateboard community really work frigging hard together, then skating will be taken over by someone else...  which is pretty much what has happened in Oz already, with Skate Australia and the Sba

from - http://athleteslawyer.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/snowboardings-path-to...

Snowboarding offers an interesting historical perspective, with many rather unexpected parallels. As one of the most popular Olympic events at the 2012 Olympics, it is hard to imagine the contentious path that snowboarding took to the Olympic Games.

During snowboarding’s rapid growth in the 1990’s, the international federation for the competitive aspects of the sport was the International Snowboard Federation (“ISF”). Terje Haakonsen, regarded by many as the best snowboarder ever, found his early fame on the ISF competition circuit (the ISF is separate from and should not be confused with the International Ski Federation, which is the FIS).

In deciding to add snowboarding as an Olympic event in 1998, the International Olympic Committee (“IOC”) controversially decided to name the skiing federation (FIS) as the recognized international federation for snowboarding, instead of the actual snowboarding federation – the ISF. Many professional snowboarders and industry insiders were unhappy with this decision, believing this to be a power grab by the ski federation, who had an existing relationship with the IOC, despite the feeling at the time that the FIS knew little about snowboarding. In fact, significantly and very publicly, Terje Haakonsen boycotted the 1998 Olympic Games, and has never competed in the Olympic Games. All the protests and boycotts did little to elevate the ISF. Instead, as the competitive aspects of the sport shifted to the FIS, the ISF ultimately folded in 2002.

Competitive snowboarding has flourished since its introduction to the Olympics. However, the “commercialization” of the sport has not had the dire consequences with respect to the more artistic aspects of snowboarding that some predicted. In fact, today many professional snowboarders have thriving careers based on film and video shoots, combined with commercial endorsements, without competing in snowboarding contests at all.

Premium MemberPermalink Reply by haggy on February 27, 2013 at 21:02

interesting article about snowboard IOC politics

http://snowboarding.transworld.net/1000197460/photos/why-the-ioc-ca...

ASRA AdminPermalink Reply by Bugs on February 27, 2013 at 21:07

That story about snowboarding largely corresponds with my memory of events. The IOC had faith in the FIS and didn't particularly care that the FIS knew nothing about snowboarding. In contrast they saw the ISF as a bit amateurish and a risk.

The view of most snowboarders was that the ISF would have risen to the occasion, and that the IOC was overly conservative in preferring the FIS.

Terje's boycott was a big deal at the time, but ultimately was for nothing.

ASRA AdminPermalink Reply by bernie on February 28, 2013 at 10:07

What we have now for skateboarding is the Australian Sports Commission)ASC) backing Skate Australia(SA) - SbA as the national sporting association.   And as we know SbA don't get longboarding or racing, and are on record as not being in support of skateboarding in the Olympics. 

To change this we will need to get close to the Federal Minister for Sport, and point out the international success stories of our skaters and our events.

To get recognised bt the ASC we need to attend to all the "corporate governance" compliance that SA have done to get to a position where ASC will sit down with us, and we have to get the Minister for Sport to change their policy position of  "only one national organisation for skating on wheels"

Alternatively we need to get involved with SA and get longboarders appointed to their board of directors and change the association from within....this might be an easier path because they already have the systems and money and ASC recognition....but be warned it will be a long and tiring job for whoever is brave enough to do it.

The other reason that we need more skateboarders, on the board of SA, because right now it is hard to classify the the board as being truly indepenent, or having any understanding of or desire to support skateboard racing.

Also don't forget that SA is the national sporting association recognised by the Australian Olympic Committee, and from there the IOC.

The trouble with all that is "skateboarders" either not giving a rats or not supporting those that do.
 
Bugs said:

That story about snowboarding largely corresponds with my memory of events. The IOC had faith in the FIS and didn't particularly care that the FIS knew nothing about snowboarding. In contrast they saw the ISF as a bit amateurish and a risk.

The view of most snowboarders was that the ISF would have risen to the occasion, and that the IOC was overly conservative in preferring the FIS.

Terje's boycott was a big deal at the time, but ultimately was for nothing.

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