Shoot us down purists if you will be the recent Tokyo Olympic debut of surfboarding and skatin’ the street turned out ok. Prior to these events there was much debate about the core, spirit and soul of these disciplines juxtaposing the (purportedly) corporate sell out of the Olympics. It just didn’t sit right with most folks, by all accounts…Reading any online forum would tell you so. Counterculture vs the corporate conservative mainstream if you will.
Watching the street skating event it certainly wasn’t up to the creative scratch that high level rippers pull out of the bag regularly when ripping tarmac – self built terrain just doesn’t allow this. Some of the stuff street skaters do these days defies gravitational convention when shredding the real world. And (literally) the blood, sweat and tears of street skating jars sliding down handrails flanked by pinky hues made it a little lukewarm. Most of the audience, who’ve never seen street skating before, will have potentially been a little befuddled by the spectacle. But. You can’t knock the athletic prowess that was on display from some seriously talented (young) sliders. Even the most cynical would have to acknowledge the level of skill on display, whether you cantered off into the kitchen to make a cuppa to avoid watching any more or not.
Similar with the surfing. The waves were pretty junky most of the time but the pros made best use of it and put on a pretty good display often tearing apart surf that most of us wouldn’t have a hope with even scoring one single turn.
Regardless of you liking competition surfing or not moves were thrown down left right and centre (from both the men and women) which shows just how accomplished these rippers are – in all types of wave environment. It’s one thing tearing perfect conditions to pieces (we can all do that, right?) but it’s an entirely different story perfroming and making crud look good.
For sure those audiences ‘keeping things real’ won’t give the Olympics a second thought. It’ll be back to usual within a heartbeat. And as to whether the Tokyo Olympic surf comp will attract every kook and his dog to your local local lineup? Hardly. In fact, if your local peak swells by even a few additional numbers we’d be surprised…Crowding out of lineups has more to do with natural evolution than high brow events such as the Olympics.
So all in the skate and surf comps in Tokyo weren’t too bad. It could’ve been a lot worse that’s for sure.
Yours sincerely, Bodhisattva.