ISSA - International Slalom Skateboarding Association

Hey, Here's what we did last Sunday since we did'nt have enough timer wires:

It was the end of the season with the idea of a BIG open cone interval course so newbies with longboards could make the course and everyone relax and have fun and not much fuss. Since the course was SOOO open and easy, the rule was 3 free nonpenalty cones, 4th cone was a DQ. First to the finish line without a DQ "sorta wins" that run.

We ran 2 lanes with mirror symmetry to eliminate lefty/goofy foot biases. We did dual rider head to head JAM format with an A Class and a B Class(self declared to save time and not burn daylight with a qualifying round). Each class got 2 rounds with 2 runs per round. In each round, the riders switched lanes between the 2 runs.

2 guys had radios, one at the top of the hill and the other at the bottom of the hill, the top guy signalled the start. The Bottom guy kept a notepad with racers times. 2 guys at the bottom of each run had stop watches to record times from the top guy's start signal to the finish line.

Each Class got 2 rounds(X's 2 runs) = 4 runs total. The fastest run of each racer's 4 runs only was counted. In the event of a tie, then the other 3 times of each racer's runs were used for a tie-breaker.

This of course was'nt the most accurate way to run a race but it enabled everyone to race the entire race, and with 36 racers it was WAY more time effiecient to run 2 racers at a time and more of a challenge to change lanes with the mirrored courses. This was quick, effiecient, and GOOD ENOUGH.

Personnally, I want to run another race virtually identical to this one again in the future because it made it very doable for the timer peaple, and it made it very non intimidating and fun for newbies/longboarders to get into slalom without a whole bunch of time and complications. As far as I know as the race organizer, everyone had fun and no one complained (except one person who complains at every event and sits and doesn't help setup or tear down, you know the deal - there's one of those in every group so we'll cancel that guy out statistically under the concept of the "law of averages").

Anyhow, that's my 2 cents- Hope it's of some value, Paul

We did "timerless" racing a few years back in Eastbourne.

basically as pat says....max cone count and first across the line, but rather that have a qualifying time, we ran "order out of the Hat" and operated a double elimination system, so basically if the 2 fastest racers met up in the first round, the loser would go into the "losers" bracket and could still get to the final.

I have a zip file with various brackets if anyone wants it...PM if you do

Paul

there has been a 3 lane race up here in Canada. Ill try and find a picture.

If you have a wide enough road, it would be fun to set up 3 or 4 courses side-by-side.

If you just have 2 courses, I always thought it would be fun to set them so they cross in the middle. In other words you start out on the right course and finish on the left course ... and of course the other racer starts left and finishes right. When you watch speed skating in the olympics - those courses cross over and the skaters never seem to hit that spot at the same time. Skateboarding slalom races can be quite a bit closer. Might be pretty dangerous. Kinda like skateboard slalom meets roller derby. You could call it X-treme Slalom, and it would actually have a literal right to the name "X-treme".

Ah ... never mind ... I have a cold ... I'm not thinking so clear right now ... Yeah. I still like the idea of a 4-lane race though.

Cone counting is easy with a timerless race. Just set a max cone DQ. Period.

If you have a 50-cone course and set a 7-cone DQ, then you can hit six and on the 7th you're out. No need to worry about calculating penalties. If someone hits six and gets to the line before someone who runs clean, then that's the breaks. The fast guy wins.

It's a completely different kind of racing that means a different attitude about strategy. It's fun.

Okay, bare with me. We're starting to organize a little "try slalom" thing out of the city in a month. We have two timer options, both which are not super up to par. The first is Civ's Mychron timing system, only works for one board. The second is a homebrew timer thats still in the initial R&D stages. It is accurate to several decimal places, has inputs for trips (tape or laser switches) but right now we have none. It has buttons to trip the timer but we can't figure out how to run a race with one timer, or even better no timer.

I was thinking everyone would get qualifying runs to bracket themselves, then we run a drag race elimination with first over the line winning, it gets sketchy when people tie or hit cones. I'm just wondering if anyone has done something similar and can offer some advice.