IOC's View On Skateboarding Jumping-Off Point For Debate

The Olympic debate continues...

Should skateboarding be an Olympic Sport? TSJ says yes. I've been supporting this idea since the 1980's. And here we are in 2008 still hearing the same silly arguments against it, here are
a couple.

Skateboarding will lose its soul/core.
Skateboarding hasn't been core in years. When you can get a finger board and ramp with your Whopper, you gotta know it lost's it soul a long time ago.

The skaters won't wear uniforms
I guarantee you , if a skater makes the team, he'll wear the uniform. Think about it, skaters already wear uniforms...you know what I'm talking about.

It's time for the sport to grow up...even if just a bit.

Here's an excellent article from the Rocky Mountain News, read it.

Don’t Look Down - Shaun White Documentary Opens at Mountainfilm

It even started like a movie.

Brothers Charlie and Willie Ebersol stood in a pricey souvenir store in Turino, Italy, as Willie contemplated buying “an overpriced Turino jacket,” as Charlie tells it, in the midst of the 2006 Winter Olympics. “Just buy it,” Charlie told him, as a woman standing nearby chimed in.

“I’m buying it,” she said. “My son just won the gold medal!”

Within 24 hours, the two Ebersols, whose father, Dick, is chairman of NBC Universal Sports and Olympics, were forging their now-epic friendship with the then-19-year-old Olympic gold medalist Shaun White (and his older brother, Jesse, a designer for Burton) in a back row of one of the two NBC jets that travel daily between New York City and the Olympics. Complete article here.

Skateboarding In The 2012 Olympics? The Idea Lives On

Skateboarding's possible inclusion in the Olympics has been debated for years. Personally I finf the arguments against it be included in the Olympics, very weak. The Skateboarder's Journal supports the idea of skateboarding as an Olympic event.

Below is an article from a newspaper in the United Kingdom that I came across this morning, the article leads me to believe that skateboarding is still being considered for the 2012 London Summer Olympics.

Olympic skateboarding should be staged in Middlesbrough when the 2012 Games come to Britain, the Government was told last night.

The activity - recognised as one of the fastest growing sports in the world - is tipped to make its debut in 2012, after talks were launched with the International Olympic Committee.

Ashok Kumar, MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, has urged ministers to seize the opportunity to spread the benefits of the games to the region. In a Commons debate last night, Mr Kumar described the Prissick Skate Plaza, in Middlesbrough, as among the "biggest and most impressive" of Britain's skate parks. Read the entire article.