The Olympics Are Not For Skateboarding | Teen Ink

The Olympics Are Not For Skateboarding

June 13, 2011
By Anonymous

The Olympic committee is considering putting skateboarding in the Olympics. The Olympics are for sports. Skateboarding is not a sport. It’s a lifestyle. In skateboarding, it doesn’t matter how tall you are, how many of you there are, or the size of your board. There are no rules in skateboarding, and there are no boundaries.

Once you start skateboarding, you will always have it. It’s something that you will do for the rest of your life. Once you start, you will not be able to quit. If you ask most passionate skateboarders what they want to do with their lives, they would say that they would be doing it for life. Just take Dustin Dollin, a pro skateboarder, who said this, "Teachers used to ask me what I wanted to do with my life, when I said skateboarding, they asked what I'd do after that, I just said "I don't know...die?" I don’t know any football player who is 50 years old, and they dress up in a uniform to go play. In skateboarding though, when you’re 50, you could still roll around. Lance Mountain, for example, is 47 years old and is still skating for a career.

In other sports, everything you do is the same. In baseball, everyone goes up to bat, everyone leaves after 3 strikes. Everything is the same. In skateboarding, there are thousands of ways you could do a single trick, either on flatland, down stairs, anything. It’s all about your perspective on how it should be done. It’s all about being different. There is also a time limit for all sports. A football game is always 4 quarters in a game, each quarter is 15 minutes. In skateboarding, you can take as long as you need to land a trick, or a line.The video Fully Flared by Lakai Shoe Co. Took almost 4 years to film. Guy Mariano, a pro skater who was in the video, stated in an interview with Transworld Skateboarding that they went to China to skate a double set of stairs and other spots for the sole reason that these locations were not seen in other videos.

Another reason why it’s different is because of the level of communication between the professionals and your everyday skaters. You could go to the Kettering Ohio Skate Plaza and skate with Rob Dyrdek, or skate with any other pro after a demo. I don’t know any person who can say that they played soccer with David Beckham, or played played catch with Jacoby Ellbury.

Today though, skateboarding is drifting toward a more mainstream business. Kids who don’t skate are wearing DC’s and Osiris. Ask most of them for some pro’s on those teams and they won’t know. Because of this, it seems that these companies are gearing towards the masses, not to skaters. Some might say, “But these companies are still making money!” That’s not the point of skateboarding. It’s about pure fun, seeing things in ways that no one else would, and being yourself.


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