jackassworld

I’m an executive director for USA Skateboarding, so I occasionally get asked the Olympics question. It’s probably because of all the talk about Beijing that it’s coming up again. Here’s a letter I received recently, and my response. It appears in the latest issue of The Skateboard Mag.

Olympic Skateboarding

Ok, so by now everyone’s heard the hype about skating in the olympics. Personally I feel there’s no place for skating in the games. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it’s not a matter of if but when. It happened to snowboarding and it’ll probably happen to skating. So lets open up some dialogue now on how to make it a little less offensive to those of us that understand SKATING IS NOT A SPORT. I propose we introduce it as a multifaceted track and field event to make it little more intresting. Have a flat gap comp as a long jump of sorts. How sick would it be to see the Butcher holding it down for Argentina against Alex Olson representing the states? Or what about a high ollie event with Kien Lieu facing off against Reese and Paulo Diaz? Have a S.K.A.T.E showdown like a gymnastics floor routine where who ever can rifle off the most flat ground tricks in the time allotted wins. Im sure P.J. would have his hands full with any number of gifted brazillians. Also, it would give a lot of “no names” from the farthest reaches of the globe an opportunity to make a name for themselves as well as bring the lifestyle to places that would otherwise disregard. Of course there would be vert and it might spark a new generation of kids to revive the dying breed. To entertain the idea that there’s more to skating than just park and vert is the only way to go in my book. Hopefully that way we can keep some of the spirit of skating alive without diluting it too much.

Adam J Register

Adam you’re absolutely right: skateboarding will be a part of the Olympics whether we like it or not. Fortunately a few years ago, a group of skateboarders within the industry (including myself) got together and created an organization called USA Skateboarding. Or “US ASS,” as I like to call it.

USAS was created to become the “governing body” of skateboarding. Opinions about skateboarding in the Olympics is mixed amongst the members, but the one thing we all agree is that when it happens, it should be run by skateboarders and the benefits ($$$) that come from it go back to skateboarding. One of the main reasons USAS was formed in the first place, was because various groups outside of the skateboard industry had begun calling themselves “the official governing body of skateboarding.” Most notably was USA Rollersports (USARS): a group of rollerskaters in Nebraska. As far as anyone can tell, they’re just a bunch of opportunistic fuckwads who saw an opportunity to claim skateboarding as their own. Presumably because The International Olympic Committee (IOC) gives a lot of money to each sport’s governing body to help them grow and develop their sport. And since USARS has failed to get any of the various rollerskating disciplines which they govern into the Olympics (they are in the Pan Am games, however), they decided to rebrand themselves as “Rollersports” (they used to be called U. S. Amateur Roller Skating Association) so that they could grab all sports on wheels. Most importantly, skateboarding. The fact that no one at USARS has ever ridden a skateboard doesn’t seem to be much of an issue to them.

The reasoning for all this posturing goes back to the Olympics and money. The Olympics suck. They’re not what they used to be and through controversy and mismanagement, they’ve lost a large hunk of their audience, and thus a large chunk of advertising revenue. NBC, apparently, has threatened to cut funding to the IOC if they don’t do something about the numbers. Who do advertisers want to reach out the most? Young people. How do you reach young people? Well, obviously through snowboarding and skateboarding. Woo! Extreme!

Fortunately the IOC doesn’t want to make the same mistake they did with snowboarding. Snowboarding did a lot for the Winter Olympic numbers, everyone was happy, but snowboarding entered the Olympics under “Skiing” and, as you know, snowboarders don’t like skiers, so internally it was a complete mess. We’ve let the IOC know through Gary Ream (Gary is the president of Woodward skate camp and the President of USAS, and he has been meeting with the US Olympic Committee and the IOC over the last few years) that they’d be making a big mistake by recognizing a bunch of rollerskaters as the governing body of skateboarding. The IOC and the USOC have agreed.

But USARS continues to insist they’re the governing body for skateboarding and pursue the official sanction from the IOC. They’re a sneaky bunch over there in Nebraska. Recently they tried to hold a contest and seminar or something in France with whatever skateboarding organization they have over there. The French skateboarders then invited us. We politely informed them that the people they were about to get into bed with were rollerskaters and didn’t have skateboarding’s best interest at heart. “ZUT ALORS!” they said, and promptly told the rollerskaters to go fuck themselves. “Merci beaucoup,” we said.

(Skateboarding isn’t the only “sport” that USARS has nothing to do, but has tried to lay claim to. Apparently they’re embroiled in a similar dispute with USA Hockey in regards to roller hockey.)

Based on our discussions with the Olympics, it’s pretty apparent that the rollerskaters are out of the picture and that US ASS will be skateboarding’s official governing body. Hooray for us.

Not out of the woods, yet, though. The IOC was all ready to fasttrack skateboarding into the Olympics, but, as you can imagine, there are a lot of politics at the IOC and this special treatment angered a lot of people. There are only so many sports in the Olympics, and there are dozens of sports that have been trying to get in for decades (like roller figure skating). Skateboarding hasn’t “paid its dues,” so to speak, when it comes to the Olympics, and there were a lot of people who said, “Fuck that! Get in line!” (No pun intended.)

In addition, it gets very confusing in regards to which international federation skateboarding will enter the Olympic community under. Their rules don’t allow any new ones to be created. But at this time, it looks like we’d be going in as a division of cycling.“WHAT THE FUCK?”

Yeah, we won’t go under Rollersports, but we’ll go in under cycling? It makes a little bit of sense in a couple of ways. First, we don’t like Rollersports. Their recent history with skateboarding shows they can’t be trusted. Plus they’ve bungled their own “sport” so badly that we’d prefer they don’t get a chance to fuck up skateboarding as well. Second, BMX racing is an Olympic sport for the first time this year in Beijing. It fits in neatly under the International Federation of Cycling, which has been in the Olympics since 1896. I believe BMX vert and street will be introduced in the 2012 London games? And because we use the same ramps, similar contest set ups, the reasoning is we can go in under BMX. At the same time, the IOC seems to be doing the unheard of thing of tweaking their rules to accommodate skateboarding as its own thing. Not sure where that stands at the moment.

As Tony Hawk said, “The Olympics needs skateboarding more than we need them.” And they want it bad. So they’re going to get it one way or another, and whether you agree with it or not, wouldn’t you prefer it to be governed by skateboarders? “Governed?” I know, it’s a queer word to use in relation to skateboarding. And that’s why we formed USA Skateboarding: to make sure that the governing body of skateboarding doesn’t govern skateboarding.

Frankly, I’m kind of excited. I mean, really, what can two days of Olympic skateboarding do that the XGames hasn’t already done? Plus, imagine the story: drug testing, the uniforms, the pomp, it’s going to be hilarious. USA! USA! USA!

I’d imagine skateboarders wouldn’t have too much trouble slipping into something similar to the USA basketball team’s uniforms. You know, because basketball is cool and all.

WHOA! Not sure what sport this husky babe plays—softball?—but the uniform is nice. It’s subtle. And it’s really no different than what Tremaine, Cliver and the DC team were wearing in the ’90s.

But this is what I envision the USA Skateboard team wearing. Of course, I’d have it tailored with only one sleeve for style. An American flag would emblazon the top, and the red and white stripes would cover the sleeved arm—well, here…

…like this. Combine this dude with the above skin tight outfit, and you got my Olympic skateboard uniform. USA! USA! USA! USA!