Corky and I know a lot, but still not much, about the current plans for skateboarding in the Olympics. We are both board members of the World Skateboarding Federation (
http://www.worldskateboardingfederation.org/). The ISSA took the decision to adhere to WSF rather than one of the other two federations "representing" skateboarding: ISF and FIRS. The main reason to choose WSF ws that WSF knows and cares about all disciplines of skateboarding.
The IOC then told skateboarding that you will have to get organized if you want to take part. An initiative was started by IOC to get the three to work together, each contributing with 1 representative and then they added 1 skater representative. No news have yet come out of this group, and from what we know the group shown difficulties working together.
For the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, only two disciplines have been selected: Park and Street. That was pretty much decided before hand. We didn't really have a choice to influence that. We still tried. Corky wrote a proposal to include slalom, Koma (Cyril Harnay, pres of IDF) wrote a proposal to include downhill. Even if we knew they would not be considered, we wanted to submit them, and we wanted them to know there's more to skateboarding than park and street.
As IOC dedided to include skateboarding in Tokyo, they gave the responsibility to FIRS, because FIRS was already a recognized organisation, although with no Olympic sports. Thus the "ownership" of skateboarding was given to a Roller Skate federation with little or no knowledge about skateboarding. However they have one front figure: Titus Dittman who is respected within our circuits.
Our current belief is that:
- FIRS will be officially responsible for the 2020 event and assure that anti-doping measures are put in place
- ISF will run the actual 2020 event
- WSF will continue to build an international organization for all countries and all disciplines
At first it may look disappointing for WSF, but remember that there is no money at all flowing from IOC to either FIRS or ISF, nothing that will help them build their organization, thus none of them will actually work for skateboarding more than what is required to do the Olympic event.
The WSF goal is long-term: build an organization that governs skateboarding, built from the bottom up. Exactly how that is going to happen nobody knows, but the ambition is there. The ISSA, IDF and other discipline organization have an important role, because we actually run our sports on the international level. The national federations are also very important, maybe even more so, than us, as they run it on a local national level, and they're our best chance of building the foundations needed. With the IOC recognizing skateboarding, more money may be attributed to the national federations.
I'll keep it at that for now. Let's keep this topic going. It's a long road ahead and we need to think about the best strategy for our disciplines to fit into the scheme.
Announcement
However, a short-term goal of the ISSA just NOW is to produce a high quality slalom video presenting slalom racing of 2-3 minutes. It's a project that Corky and I are just about to start. If you have the skills to help out, let us hear from you! It's urgent, because we need to get a draft version up already in October. We should be able to include some professional shots from Riga and Policka this summer as both had crews on site.
/Jani