By: Jamal Smith Sports Editor
Every four years, on the eve of the Summer Olympics, a question quietly spreads across the world of sports: should skateboarding be included in the Olympic Games?
Currently, skateboarding will not be featured in the upcoming 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio, Brazil; however, Olympic organizers have proposed adding skateboarding along with baseball/softball, karate, sports climbing, and surfing to the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.
The Olympic committee will deliberate and will come to a decision by August of this year. The proposal includes both men’s and women’s events in Street and Park with an envisioned 80 athletes split equally among genders.
Skateboarding’s possible inclusion in the biggest sporting event in the world has many people in the skateboarding community ecstatic.
Skateboarding legend Tony Hawk thinks the addition of skateboarding to the Olympics would help to legitimize the sport and bring worldwide attention to the skateboarding industry.
“It is exciting that skateboarding could possibly be included in the Olympics,” Hawk said in an interview with TIME. “This is not only a great opportunity for our sport and the skaters, but also for the Games. It is now more important than ever to preserve the unique culture of skateboarding which makes our sport so appealing and relevant.”
Professional Polish skateboarder and founder of Exposure Skate, Amelia Brodka, sees the Olympic inclusion as an opportunity to showcase women’s athletic abilities in a sport dominated by men.
“I am excited about the idea of getting skateboarding into the Olympics,” said Brodka in an interview posted on the International Skateboarding Federation website. “If managed by the right people, this could be a lifetime opportunity to expose women’s skateboarding to a global audience and to get many more girls involved into our sport.”
Although there has been major proponents of skateboarding’s inclusion into the Olympics, there are also those who disagree. More than 5,500 self-proclaimed skateboarders have signed an online petition asking the International Olympic Committee to not include the sport in the Olympics because they consider skateboarding a lifestyle.
“Skateboarding is not a ‘sport’ and we do not want skateboarding exploited and transformed to fit into the Olympic program,” stated the online petition. “We feel that Olympic involvement will change the face of skateboarding and its individuality and freedoms forever.”
It is yet to be seen whether skateboarding will be added to the Olympics in 2020, but one thing is clear; either way, not everyone is going to be happy.
Contact the author at jsmith15@wou.edu or on Twitter @journalsportwou
