Vintage Skateboard Racing.

[John Gilmour]

Vintage Skateboard Racing. Getting better with age

Definitions:
So what exactly IS "Vintage Racing"? Does it mean that the racers are "Vintage"..the gear is "Vintage" or both. Well taken in context it means the gear must have been available before a certain date.

Vintage racing attempts to replicate racing that occurred before a certain date. Similar set ups from that vintage are used and a similar course/ track layout is set to mimic the type of racing available at that time.

In vintage racing it is not unusual to see racers posting better times than the Racing Professionals of that Era. Indeed advanced racing techniques have developed over the years that can be applied to vintage racing.

Vintage racing gives racing enthusiasts a chance to experience what a Professional of Yesteryear might have experienced while trying to race on the same gear.

Classes:
Boards can come from any racing vintage but each board must be assigned to its particular class. For instance at "Da Farm 3.0" boards were allowed that were manufactured prior to 1980. In this race organizers made an exemption for parts subject to corrosion such as bearings. Use of bearings that were not available at the time i.e. minimisers, newer ceramics..etc would be considered poor sportsmanship, but use of a new standard 608 ABEC bearing would not.

Promoters should be clear on class definitions as some skaters will want to collect some items needed for racing from Ebay or other sources.

Some ideas for classes.


Simplest for most is to just set a date and use magazines such as Skateboarder Magazines as the reference of what was available at the time.

Classes can be broken down in that era according to cost or type of deck. For the most part all gear should be raced together in the same race if single track. Some matching of similar type gear would be suggested for duals racing.

For instance. You could have a under $75 class as was suggested at "da farm 3.0" where the cost of the entire deck should be under $75 when purchased new. Boards with low quality trucks and loose ball bearings would typically fall into this class as would plastic decks, solid fiberglass decks without kicktails, wooden homemade decks etc.

You could have another racing class which would include complete boards exceeding $75 such as Fibreflexes, Old Turner Summer Skis, etc.

That being said Vintage racing is tremendous fun. And can involve many racers pushing the gear beyond its limits resulting in somewhat quasi-spectacular crashes. There is fun in hunting for the ideal set up as well as seeing what others bring to the race.

Even when viewed later on video tape- it still is hilarious. I missed most of the "da Farm 3.0 vintage race" and showed up for a last run. I had to wait and see it on the tape. For the future I would suggest that each racer "Check in" on Video tape declaring their name, class they will be running in- and showing their deck to the camera so that viewers have an idea of the condition and set up the racer intends to use. A short comment would be funny as well.

Then we could watch the racers attempt not to wreck themselves on the gear in much the same fashion as the pros did in the day.
From watching "da Farm 3.0 vintage race" on tape the types of falls and wipeouts were comical. Of course the racers are capable of exerting a lot more stress on the gear (mostly because we aren't all 80lbs any more) not to mention the age of the gear and the materials quality. Some kids were seen completely sliding out the tail ends of the deck. Wheel rub abounded. Some were Racers struggling with cold pour urethane and would lose so much speed they could barely reach the uphill finish. Brain Parsons simply overrode his deck to a slow motion slapstick crash. Kenny "Nature Boy" Mollica raced in vintage clothing (And we all remember Kenny was a lot skinnier when he bought the clothing) but put in a great run to win the race. Half the fun is trying to make a ridiculous set up perform. I'm sure Bill Tway has good video clips to share from this last vintage race. All that is missing are the haircuts, striped tube socks, and hot pants.

Vintage racing is also a good way to reinvolve retired racers who may still have that dusty old racer in the closet. But I have to say some of the funnier stuff is seeing young kids sometimes 1/2 the age of the gear they are riding, struggle with the pieces of crap of yore - "Hey Dad, how'd you ever learn on this piece of junk?" = New found respect from today's youth.


What's next....Vintage Downhill?

Editor- I think this could deserve a spot in the racing disciplines section.

[Wesley Tucker]

JG,

When you're on the road you have the chance to think about lots of things. Something that came to me somewhere in Maryland ties in a little bit with what you're saying.

I wish we would have done this Saturday, but I didn't even think of it. Next year, though, let's remember to add a little something to the Vintage Race:

After determing the winner, have the victor run the SAME COURSE on his top-notch, state-of-the-art slalom set up. It would be fun to compare performance number between "what was" and "what is." As an example, Mollica's winning time was 9.992 on his Hester FibreFlex set up. After finishing everyone's runs, it would be cool to see Kenny run the course on his Pocket Pistol just to see the level of improvement of one over the other. Or, what would be even more provocative, is if the "modern time" doesn't really blow away the "vintage time" or worse yet, the time on the new stuff is SLOWER.

It's not much of a race, but it would be fun just to compare differences in what the winner rides and how it affects his ability to post the best time.

[John Gilmour]

I agree. I was hoping that the vintage course would also serve as an intermediate TS course for those who did not want to enter an extremely fast TS. That way times would be comparable.

I also would have been interested in seeing the time spreads from Pro racers running the Vintage course vs time spreads on a faster course as a ratio.

I'd expect that there would be a point where you would see some sort of split. That way a racer could get an idea of what level he should practice for to run a Pro TS.

-but given the rain delay and so forth it was just amazing to watch Tway and Terence pull a miracle out of their butts and get all three events off in about 4 hours. They do it everytime. The timer worked flawlessly- that really sped things along.

[Vlad Popov]

GeezerX. Hester sunglasses. Hester Fibreflex. Hester Tude.

BadH spirit at the DC slalom races. November 01, 2003.

__________

[Henry Julier]

I have more balls than all of you combined... or do I?

[Glenn S]

I have more balls than all of you combined... or do I?

Henry,
I'd say it definately took some balls to do what you did there.

And from the looks of it, it also took a Pink Sac suppended from your shoulder to carry them around in.......... LOL !!!