Do you have an idea for a slalom format?
Is there a format that might be more appealing that still has the clock as the "judge" without really requiring judging?
It should fufill these requiremetns
1. It should be fun
2. It should be easy for spectators to understand
3. There shoudl be some strategy to it.
4. It should allow for Sponsor name placement
5. Reasonably compact
6. Easy to film
7. Still provide good still photos that convey a sense of action- not making us look like we are sitting on a chair that isn't there.
For those of you with lots of time on your hands..... I got involved with posting on NCDSA.com because of CMC and Eric Brammer who kept bugging me to post there. I started to realize that many people at NCDSA.com in the slalom forum then had never raced slalom.
I posted this stuff in August of 2000 before I went to WLAC College and raced in California.
The idea of crossing lanes was almost sarcastic because I thought it would be something a TV promoter would do to make the sport look exciting by making it more dangerous. But I did like the mass start and so forth. Finding a hill wide enough might have been another thing.
No go get yourself a glass of water....this was when I wrote long posts. Make that a case of water.
On 8/5/2000 john Gilmour wrote in from 18.202.xxx.xxx:
Pre-school rider, actually I don't think Jani has ever ridden anything in competition recently except for his Heini Temperli S-camber, Tracker Mid tracks and very hard wheels. I think the Seismics are amazing trucks and rode the 110mm trucks in the Verrieres Open in France in '95 I contribute my better results in this race series to his trucks. I rode them in every event except for the Giant Slalom which I rode on a Blackbird with magnesium Tracker ex-tracks. I thought the Seimics were the fastest pumping trucks. Those coupled with a blackbird made a great slalom board that was also a good cruising deck. Most slalom decks make miserable cruisers. This was one of those "best of Both worlds" things. The spring back on the seismic truck and the energy return really allows for much faster pumping. Also since there is virtually no slop in the truck and no turn decay you can use a softer deck than normal and still get very good turning response. The board can act as a suspension helping to add traction on rough turns at speed. I have one pair left. I wish Dan Gesmer could make more of them. It would seem he is ahead of his time as the slalom market for his truck is just starting to emerge. The key to slalom being a success is video clips on the net. Still photos look ridiculous, with the exception of the cover of Skateboard Magazine Slalom Symposium Issue showing Bobby Piercy rocketing. There are also some good photos in slalom Magazine- I'll try to get around to posting those Issues. CMC has a scanner so perhaps he could do it.
We also need a more exciting Media event. I envision some boardercross type hybrid with slalom. I had written this is a long post at 4:30 am, but it somehow got lost.
Here is the idea.
5 guys have a mass push start. They have to go through big double gates, just like in Sony Playstation Extreme games (possible sponsor). Then the racers approach 5 lanes of cones (hit more than 5 and its an automatic dq) they are parallel and striaght. There is a tape over each one that the racer must break to enter- so the lead racers get the "best course" advantage. You need the tape to prevent people from entering the same course. Then there are a few more mass gates , perhaps a banked turn or two and a tuck section with rows of triangular racing flags strewn across the course forcing the racers to tuck and stop pumping (of course your legs are burning by now). Then it leads into three parellel courses that have identical off set cones at the top and ends with a rows of 20 straight cones. Tape breaking at the end. You have tape across each course so two guys get eliminated before the last sets of cones- this ensures people go into the last set at very high speed, also it eliminates some "stragglers" who may be so far behind due to an earlier wipeout as to be distracting from the finishers. Timing is not essential because it is all head to head and spectators know who wins immediately. Having the course slim down to three lanes allows for offsets in a two lane road. The two eliminated competitors go to a consolation round There is also a big impact bags for the eliminated racers to fly into- looks cool for TV . Due to the high manueverability and pumping action of slalom boards I would expect the lead during the mass racing segments to change often. Pretty exciting. You could delete the tuck section or banked turn section or whatever makes it possible to make it work when trying this out before the race.
The double gates are big arches and provide banner placement for sponsors. The cones can have ad placement, the racers have product placement, and the arches also provide great camera angles from above. You have to have an over head and head on view for the impact bags too.
You have a chase cam similar to the Gravity Games cam above at the start and also along side at the finish. We would run this event with the Downhill speedboard events and the Streetluge events. First you hold it as a demonstration sport in between the main events.
hmm.
On 8/3/2000 John Gilmour wrote in from 18.202.xxx.xxx:
All this talk of rules and so forth. What if only 5 people show up and we spend all day argueing over the rules. Well that wouldn't happen, but when you get 30 guys together the rules start to be important. I had the good fortune of attending several International Skateboard Slalom Association races in the early 90's. Many different countries showed up. They had a huge race in Prauge in a stadium the size of Yankee Stadium and packed the house. They were able to do that because they were very organized. Sponsors respect organization. Each country elected a representitive to attend meetings, sometimes two people from each country would be present. A meeting occured the night before the event and after the event to discuss how things went and could be improved for next time. The course setting was done by drawing names of competitors out of a hat and 3 (one from each of 3 diffent countries) were selected to set the course. Of course the English like tight courses (up to 3 feet center to center) the french like offset courses (wildly offset). The Swiss Like fast braking courses, The Italians like wide open high speed steep courses (of course they would), The Latvians being flatlanders like flat courses. The Russians liked incredibly long endurance courses. Etc.
So you did not know in advance what the course would be like. In Ski and Snowboard racing no one knows what the course will be like before race day- they only know which hill it will be set upon. There was a fail safe thrown in. If more than 50 percent (I believe it was 50%) of the competitors could not make the course without hitting or missing 5 cones the results would not be counted and the course would be reset. There were times I thought the courses were amazing (if set by the Swiss or the Italians) and times I suffered big (set by the British and French. But there was always next race- another event. The same bunch of guys showed up on a regular basis to the races. Why? Because nobody beat the old guys. Ironic that a sport might perish because the skill level of its founders developed to such a high degree. I guess golf would be embarrassing if a 90 year old Jack Nicholas kicked a 25 year old Tiger Woods' butt. I was the US coordinator for slalom racing and I still have the International rules (if only there were any American racers), but we can follow any rules we like as Americans. However if there were to be International competitors present we should run at least two ISSA disciplines according to the ISSA rules. This ensures that people have some idea of what to expect and bring teh right gear. I'll get around to posting the rules and perhaps scanning in some of the Slalom Mags. Slalom needs quicktime movies on the web to garner any interest at all because still photos do no do justice to the sport (hey nice photo leaning over the cone, can you do tricks with that?). There are some really fast European Racers -Jani Soderhall (Sweden), Joesph Stefka (Czech), Daniel Ridoli (Switz.), Gianmarco Luca (The Michael Jordan of slalom, Italy), Paulo Gatti (Italy), Gianluca Ferrara (Italy), Andres Sidler (kickboxing champ Switz.) and they all are really great guys- intelligent with good jobs and a good sense of what the sport needed. The only problem with European Slalom was that the speeds were relatively low as most of it was done without steep hills, and this cut into the "extreme" factor.
For the spectators "Head to Head" racing is much more interesting. The fastest looking racers isn't always the fastest. "Head to Head racing" helps to remove doubt from spectators minds. The Swiss had a great starting ramp that attached to a van with gates that locked until the start to prevent false starts. Cool set up. I spent some time making timing systems, most of my timing sytems weren't very durable. Tapeswitch of farmingdale , New York makes the pressure sensitive switches for running over similar switches are used today in buses and trains. There are also some good photo cells used in physics labs for timing. I really would like to find someone who can program a Palm Pilot to be used for recording times and as a timer. Or even a Lap top program, but laptops are always running low on batteries. A good place to hold an event is where there is some scenery and lots of spectators such as Central Park. It would also be great if inexpensive lodging was around, or someone knew of a boarding school or inn that could be rented cheaply for the event. Events need to be two days because of chance of rain- wind etc.
Providence has a good hill off of college hill where the ESPN Extreme Games and NBC Gravity Games were held. The pavement is of the highest quality for traction. CMC and I skated there during the games. Central park unfortunately has bad pavement. I'll try and come up with a decent place and good hill, unfortunately the new pavement has such a high crushed aggregate content to allow it to endure heavy trucks going everywhere that really grippy fine pavement is harder to find. Ideally the spot should have the option of a relatively flat course, a semi steep course and a very steep technical course.
I have about 100 cones 55 of which are the original sims and tracker cones from the 70's. Other friends of mine (Inliners) have another 100 or so cones. These are the high quality slip funnels used for pouring raw porcelin, not the cheap flimsy orange soccer cones with the bases. An event in a summertime resort area like the Hamptons or Nantucket might be cool. Nantucket is the kind of town that would rally around an event like this. Some of the races in Switerland were held in enthusiastic small towns, really a nice atmosphere to ran within. Realistically we should have a first event with lower expectations and then try to refine the events with time. For the most part most of the slalomers are older- what better way to get through a mid life crisis! But we should try and position the venue where some youth would be interested, and have flyers announcing where slalom equipment could be purchased nad where lessons could be hgad etc. It is important that all slalom decks come with 5 cones bundled with teh board- more cones means more courses means more participants. Having some sort of representation of your home city on your clothing would be good also. I remember attending an event in Paris at the Trocadero across form the Eiffel Tower. With no National Uniforms and no P.A. system no one even knew there was an International Event going on (in defference to the organizers, we could not get permission to be there so we had to be stealthy, and we all wanted to run the historical course which has been painted there for 30 years so we did not want to call attention to ourselves) but it was sort of sad to have so much talent with no recognition for the organizers efforts. I can't see any reason why we could not get Sector 9 and Gravity boards and some others to donate some gear. Funnier still would be to have non refundable entry fees about a year in advance, and have Fidelity Investments invest it and let it grow. Payouts would then be larger than the inital entry fees- and perhaps you could get Local large Corporations to match a portion of the entry fees to boost it further. Just off the top of my head, Red Bull, Swatch, TDK, Panasonic "shockwave", MP3, LYCOS, Mountain Dew, Sobe, Powerbar, Juicyfruit, all could be potential sponsors. The first step is getting a good talent pool together with an organized series of races. Then being a demonstration event at the Gravity Games or the Extreme Games and then onto becoming a recognized event.
There might have to be some variant such as parallel courses that require switching to the other course during the race (people love to see near collisions) or a section of the race that involves drafting or tucking. Banked slalom was done in the early eighties and the Ransom brothers did well at that, that would get some cross over athletes. But my opinion is that skateboarding and Slalom do not always co-exist well at the same event. Too often Slalom gets sidelined as a side show. Slalom would be better paired with Standup downhill and flatland freestyle. Otherwise as in many multi events, the most popular events are scheduled to the last days and spectators miss the opening events. In the gravity games they ran Standup downhill first, then Luge then wakeboarding with skateboarding last. Instead they should have a popular sport kick off the games and intersperse the less popular or newer sports in between the main events. Snowbaording also makes the same mistake by scheduling halfpipe (the most popular event) last. It is pretty silly since more sports variants of the same basic sports means more equipment sales and a larger industry. But the oprganizers see it as a way to let lazy photographers drag their butts to the event slowly and not miss the event with the most coverage. As a result of scheduling the Slalom first at the The US open of Snowboarding the event was eventually terminated because no one was there to see it, so no one got exposure to it and so numbers got smaller each year and the participants went on to compete in other higher paying disciplines. What makes a discipline high paying.... spectator interest, and TV coverage. We might even want to try a Boardercross version of slalom racing with several racers starting in a mass start, passing through some wide double gated gates and then near the bottom there would be 5 parrallel straight courses or off set courses exactly the same- the person in the lead would get to race right into the course with the best advantage, the next would race into thecourse next to that and so on- after that there would be a section where people could pump on the flats before heading to the next mass set of gates a section with a little tucking and drafting and then the same 5 lane finale at the bottom, or better still only have 3 lanes at the bottom, this would insure that competitors would be going into the last lanes with the highest speeds they would dare because you are automatically out if you get there 4th or 5th. Could get pretty fierce. For the spectators they get the excitemet of a mass start, the excitment of seeing multiple tapes break (you need the tapes or racers would go into a "used" course and cone penalties could not be assessed) and they get the pumping race frenzy followed by an elimation and final tape breaking. I would really like to race in an event like that. Lots of banners and so forth.
We just need more creative events. Watching people blast through straight cones does get a bit boring once the "that's impossible!" novelty wears off. People like to see strategy and elimination and head to head competition. Toss a huge wooden banked turn or two in there and a few sections where you have to tuck under some triangular racing flags strung across the course (low enough so that even in a tuck they hit you in the face) and you have a spectator event. The mass start should involve some pushing beyond a certain point. To ensure no extra pushing you could chalk up the area where the push zone ends. Anyone with chalk on his shoes at the end of the race obviously violated the push start limit.
We tried a few dirrent events at the ISSA races in France. We had a relay race, a pushing race, a hundred cones race, a banked slaom race, straight slaom, special slalom (all offset cones), and GS race. Very nice. IN Switzerland in Hombrechtikon, we had a "Double Special Slalom" two identical off set courses run in elimination format. Also nice. But it does get boring for the spectators when one person gets obliterated by the other. Having mass racing adds a lot more excitement. You still get to show off your cone skills in your independent courses, but you also race as a group through a mass section. Of course people in hte rear might have to deal with stray cones from the frontrunners.
Now if only we could hire a good horse racing announcer. How about betting.... just kididing.
