When and Why?

[Robert Gaisek]

When did you start? Why slalom? Why is it so hard to think of anything else?

Me and Wolfie started last year after the race in Gothenburg. We skated in the late 70s with Mika, Klock, Appel and many others.
We did some longboarding and light speedboarding for a year before that but when we tried slalom we couldn´t turn back. This was IT! Speed and control combined with cones gave us something new..............total happiness!
I think slalom 24/7.......it is like a drug.....but a good one.

[Wesley Tucker]

It has to be the '70s.

Your question was "heaviest mark." In the '70s (at least '75-78) there were more people slaloming in far unknown locations (like South Carolina) than today in all the world (What's a good estimate? 3,000 realistically, 5,000 at the outside?) Mail order shops like Val Surf and Sunset probably shipped more slalom-specific decks in a week than Pavel or Pocket Pistol have sold TOTAL. (Donald was just recently celebrating his 600th sale. Debbie Gordon Siali told me a few years ago that FibreFlex was at one time shipping 250 slalom decks A WEEK.)

In the '70s there were contests everywhere and dozens of skaters would show up with their Logan Earth Skis, Fibreflexes, Hobies and Santa Cruz boards. I don't think it's a stretch, either, to say it was that involvement 25 years previously that led to people like Dave Hamm, Jack Smith and Andy Bittner to start it all up again.

Slalom today is growing and the sport is evolving very quickly but I have a feeling it's going to be a long time before slalom reaches the same hyper-inflated heights it saw 30 years ago.

[Pat Chewning]

1976, University of Colorado at Boulder. No snow. What to do? Slalom skateboard instead to keep the turns going....

[GARY GLASSER]

2007..when I fell the most and left lotsa "marks" on the street.