Skateboarding in the Olympics
ABU DHABI — Watching Shaun White throw down in the men’s halfpipe in Vancouver, you had to wonder, for perhaps the gazillionth time: why isn’t skateboarding in the Summer Games?
Lots of reasons, actually, all of them having to do with the International Olympic Committee’s politics and policies, but then there’s this — the IOC is purportedly on a quest to connect with young people, and young people like skateboarding. Like, a lot.
“It should be [in the Games] immediately,” Tony Hawk, the skateboarding pioneer, said here Wednesday in an interview ahead of the Laureus awards, Hawk having now achieved such standing in his professional and charitable works that he’s one of the 46 members of the Laureus academy.
Which, along with his enormous street cred and financial acumen, gives him license to speak even more frankly: “As far as the Summer Games go, the Olympics needs skateboarding more than skateboarding needs them — as far as getting a cool factor.
“You see what snowboarding has done in the Winter Olympics. Skateboarding could do the exact same thing for the Summer Olympics.”
Read more from Alan here: http://www.universalsports.com/blogs/blog=alanabrahamsonsblog/postid=456946.html#skateboarding+olympics
