ISSA - International Slalom Skateboarding Association

Dear all,
I would like to remind you that on February 10th 2006 at 8:00 PM (Torino's time) there will be the opening ceremony for the Winter Olympics.
At the beginning of te Ceremony (at the REAL beginning: we will open it!) there will be 10 people who will ride their skate in front of all this huge amount of public. I will be one of the skaters and Luca Giammarco will be the first rider.
Unfortunately we are now trying to fix the most important problem we have: due to humidity at night there is no grip at all! I'm pretty sure that the organisation will fix the problem, but last Saturday and Sunday we had to face this problem. We were not the only ones; in fact the rollebladers had the same problem. We hope to be able to do a nice performance with curves and pumps, but if the situation will be the same as last WE, the only thing we will be able to do will be to try to stay on the board and doing a straight line: hopefully it will be not the case.
Anyway, please, wish us good luck for our sport and do not forget to record the Ceremony.
Cheers,
Stefano

COOL !

How did you manage to participate to the opening ceremony ? Is it a kind of choregraphy or a demonstration ?

We have been asked almost one year ago (April 2005) and it will be a choreography. We have been working on that since September.
We will skate as the music will start and we will cross each other for, let's say, forty seconds. After that we will disappear and the rollerbladers will come in. As I wrote before, the "only" open issue is the slippery surface. I do really hope that the organisers will find the right solution. Anyway, we spoke with them last WE and I'm quite confident they will be able to manage it.
Stefano

VCR ist set..................

great!

Dear Chris,
do not say great yet....
Just pray for the right turn. We need it!
Thanks,
Stef

you know........try nails in the wheels or whatever............I mean, hey, if you slam you can never show up at a race again....hahahaha, no way, it is incredible..........wish you guys all the best..........

what kind of surface is it?

....it is wood: wet f...ed wet and painted wood. At least it was like that on sunday. May be they will change the surface (by covering it or they will prevent the wet in someway). I will let you know.
Anyway I will show up on the next season anyway....may be with a nickname and a mask....
Enjoy your winter training
))
Stefano

Some of you techy guys could add some advise here. This could really generate interest for 2008 let alone what we are trying to do to make Slalom grow. Grooves in the wheels and such may work. Wood is slick when it's wet, almost worse then pavement.

Luca has talked about this a few times over the last few years. I guess after several years of discussion they made it official.

Good Luck guys have a great time.

Wrap the wheels in clear grip tape to get traction. It won't work for anything but that, but you'll grip on the slick wood enough to provide a great show to the IOC. Next up, slalom skating in the Olympics. It's all on you... no pressure, no pressure!! heh heh!!

Erik Basil wrote:Wrap the wheels in clear grip tape to get traction. It won't work for anything but that, but you'll grip on the slick wood enough to provide a great show to the IOC. Next up, slalom skating in the Olympics. It's all on you... no pressure, no pressure!! heh heh!!

I was thinking the very same: If the surface isn´t grippy the wheels have to be:
I have not tried yet (but will) putting a flexible glue (like PU glue) on the wheels and then roll them in corundum. (I use clear-white corundum now for highly transparent permanent grip coating on some decks). Won´t work on wet roads but maybe on wood or "soft" surfaces.

Isn't there some way they could blow fans across the surface to keep the condensation from developing in the first place?

Anyway I can't wait to see it. Good luck! But don't worry its just the whole world watching

Yes, we'll be watching, so try not to slide please...

Latest update from Gianluca Ferrero.

IN THE FIRST 5 MINUTES, AFTER A BIG ICEBERG that will be broken, 4 rollers enter with flame and fire on helmet ...then 20 slalomers will be on scene with Luca GIAMMARCO AHEAD and a special scenography and choreography with DAINESE Leather staff BLACK AND RED---SO COOL WE ARE IN.. Ciao Gianluca

Stefano & Gianluca,

Thank's for informing us. This is such a cool thing. I hope it works out well despite the slippery surface. Could we ever have imagined any better promotion opportunity for our sport? Well done guys. Have fun! We're proud of you!

/Jani

I wouldn't use anything that isn't first tested on the actual surface with the actual wheels. I wouldn't rule out rubber, but it's a bit short notice to create all new wheels for a single day event. Grooves in urethane usually just means that you've decreased the contact patch AND the traction (we're not really hydroplaning at speed here).

Try the "grit" concept and see if it can hold up for the length of the show. More later - I'm off to a race...

Jani Soderhall wrote:Stefano & Gianluca,

Thank's for informing us. This is such a cool thing. I hope it works out well despite the slippery surface. Could we ever have imagined any better promotion opportunity for our sport? Well done guys. Have fun! We're proud of you!

/Jani

Thanks, we gonna try to do our best!
Stefano

Stefano:

Congratulations on having the honor to be a part of the opening ceremonies - you, Luca and the rest should be very proud.

I will be watching - enjoy the moment

All the best,

Rob

Dear Robert,
thanks so much!
Yesterday evening we had fine weather and the surface condition were better due the organiser who repainted the surface. I would pray to have the same conditions as yesterday evening, on Feb 10th. However, we will try to do our best in any case.
Feelings are now growing and yesterday the emotion was enhanced by the very nice scenario inside the stadium. I can not tell anything about, but my personal opinion is that the organisers did a very nice job. Please after the event I would be pleased to have your feed back (in anycase) because from telly you may have different impressions.
CU and thanks again,
Stefano

Dear all,
if you wish to follow weather forecasts for Torino 2006, please use the link:

http://www.ilmeteo.it/portale/taxonomy/ ... g=0&c=7301

It's in italian(sorry) but it should be easy to understand it.
Cheers,
Stefano

Stefano,
Congratulations on your participation in this event (you, Luca, all the rest). I'm not sure if American TV will cover the whole opening ceremony, but I hope they do.

Wishing you the best,
Jonathan

20 SKATERS AMONG THE BEST OF THE ITALIAN AND INTERNATIONAL SCENE WILL OPEN THE xx WINTER GAMES IN TORINO 2006 - Dressed in grey and red Dainese.

THEY WILL BE THE FRST TO START AND THAT WILL MEAN THAT ALL THE WORLD WILL SEE OUR SPORT: AN UNBELIEVABLE OPPORTUNITY TO SPREAD SLALOM ALL OVER THE PLANET!!!

JOIN US AT 8.03 PM - FEBRUARY 10 TH 2006


ATHLETES AND COSTARRING
LUCA GIAMMARCO, ANTONELLO GAI, MARCO VERCELLI, STEFANO BELLINGERI, PAOLO COMANDUCCI, ABRAMO PONZIO, RICCARDO ROMA, ROBERTO SORGENTE, THEO FELIX, Federico and Andrea FERRERO, Alberto Lomuscio e Gianluca Ferrero (training, casting and managing).
Girls: STELLA ARUANNO, ELENA BOLOGNA
Boys: EMANUELE CERIONI, SIMONE BOERO, DAVIDE BOLOGNA E UMBERTO OREILLER, DIEGO GIRIVETTO (DIDO), ALESSIO VIVANET (COACH), FRANCESCO RICHIARDI (CECE),
STEFANO GAIDANO (GHIDDY)


Look out for the roller skaters - the REAL skaters will follow.











Introduction to some of the skaters:
Paolo Comanducci - the first European Champion in Giant and special at the first European Championship in VERONA 1979, hometown of Ugolini. He ran for Free Former and Coni FIHP Skateboard. He's now a ski teacher.
Luca Giammarco No introduction needed among slalomers - The glorious and mystic WORLD CHAMPION speed carver & climber.
Marco Vercelli - Italian Slalom jr champ and freestyle euro jr
Roma Riccardo - good slalomer in Hombrechtikon and World Cup Turin 90 and Riga Latvia
Bellingeri Stefano -Italian jr slalom and now among the top 20 in the last races
Antonello Gai - professional skier lab and old school with good results in slalom history Euro Cup.
Abramo Ponzio - International Top bmx-bmt rider and skater since 1980
Bob Sorgente - skater since 1978 ex Free Former Team
Theo Felix - familiarmente in grande progressione tecnica grazie a Lello Gai
...and TEAM SILVERSPACE with their official Olympic SILVERSPACE trucks and boards.


20 skaters in Dainese leathers, among the best, will run down the banks in the Olympic arena!! WORLD-WIDE LIVE TELEVISION!


One more rehearsal (this time in front of a few thousand spectators) and then let the show begin!

Really the biggest opportunity - Thanx to all the staff to let this dream happen...!!!!!!

Gianluca
www.coniskate.it
Leading the world of skateboarding - TORINO 2006 - coniskate official event consulting.

Dear all,
yesterday evening the last cerimony training session was made. Finally the show was ready with a very nice stadium and a very exciting atmosphere. A lot of people were there (all the volunteers plus one free ticket for all of them) and the cerimony was tested.
We had a lot of fun and it is my personal (!) opinion that the show will be very nice.
I hope that tomorrow will be less cold in order to have even a better surface (that however improved a bit).
Please, fingers crossed and...enjoy the show!

CU on next week for your impressions,
Cheers,
Stefano

If my calculations are correct this will be 11am Friday Eastern time for us in the states. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Ben, I think Torino is +1 GMT, meaning one hour earlier than Greenwich Mean Time. USA Eastern time zone is -5 GMT, which is a six-hour difference. So 8:00 p.m. in Torino equals 2:00 p.m. EASTERN time. For you & me, that's 1:00 p.m. Central time.

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/f ... c=0&p1=254

or

http://www.worldtimezone.com/time/olymp ... =20&forma=

Guys,

It won't matter a whole lot as the Network will tape it, hack it up and show you bits in between commercials. That being said I am going to watch anyway because I do think it's really cool. Hopefully they leave it in.

Now if we could get one of the participants to mount/carry a video camera and post that for viewing, that would be verrryy cool.

Congratulations Luca and others!!!

Stoked.

Starts at 8PM EST on NBC

Good Luck guys

Joe

Despite the elaborate political scam I can't wait!

Good going fellas.

Thanks Jonathan, looking forward to seeing whatever they are going to do.

Our Best to all the Athletes entering the Games and the Event.Tonight Yuri Chechi ,Lord of the Rings -Gymnastic, will breake a big iceberg and inside an iron.....YOU WILL SEE THAT.!!!!


GMT ROME 8.00 PM tonight , february 10TH-2006


Hope to see You all soon in Italy

Gianluca Ferrero & Alberto Lomuscio
Coniskate

http://www.CONISKATE.IT updated fot the EVENT

and http://WWW.SILVERSPACE.IT

In one hour from now (8 pm CET) you shouldn't be in front of the computer but in front of the TV. In the very first minutes there will be our friends being part of the show. Remember it's not going to be a fast paced race or anything. It's just a show. It's not slalom at it's best. It's theater. But still it's pretty cool that millions of people will see Luca, Stefano and many others of our friends roll into the Olympic stadium and hopefully do a few turns as well!

Switch on the VCRs, get a cool drink out and get ready for the show!

/Jani

Im ready!

6 hours and 30 minutes to go!

There you go! It was nice and simple. No cones, simply pumping. Most people wouldn't even recognise the people on skateboards.

It was nonetheless great to be represented as a skateboarder again. Now I am waiting for the Canadian contingent so I can see one of my former students and Team riders as he reps us in Snowboarding, EH!

hm...I haven't seen them - The only skaters I saw were inline skaters

rmn

So far there's been no mention of the skateboarders on any of the U.S. media sites I've seen either. As noted by Ramón, the focus seems to be on these guys:


Perhaps it's time to stop worrying about 6-wheelers in slalom and start worrying about backpack-style flame-throwers! It's only a matter of time...

Getting burned in Dual Slalom has a whole new meaning now.

The comentator of the swiss tv station mentioned that there were 19 Skateboarders but...seek & hide?


rmn

19 skateboarders and about 1.5 sec coverage on French TV.
You had to be really, really devoted to see them (or at least 2 of them).

Too bad. I hope the guys had a great evening and that they took a few pictures themselves!

/Jani

And i nowhere found my 20 solid red Ferrari boards I made for the Italian Team. Too sad.
Let us dream on.
chris

Maybe it's interesting; there's another discussion running on ncdsa.com about that....

http://www.ncdsa.com/21/Slalom-Skateboarding.htm

rmn

Hey Chris! Hopefully you got paid?

Do you have any left?

It's not very interesting at all Ramon. It's pretty disgusting, actually.

Am I the only person who finds the concept of flaming rollerbladers funny?

Claude Regnier wrote:Do you have any left?

Hello Claude,
i have 2 boards left, but they are no realy spezial, just solid red top and buttom.
Are you interested?
salü chris

I definitely saw a few skaters pumping their boards for about 3 seconds. Pretty cool.

The part of coverage I don't like is ESPN never mentioning Snowboarding. They seem to gravitate to the more traditional sports like figure skating and alpine skiing. They talk about whos is favored to win gold without a mention of Shaun White or riders from other countries.

With that said, we definitely have a long way to go for the mainstream media to accept our sport when they barely even mention snowboarding.

It always leaves a lot to be desired when you are looking for something specific and it's not the norm, yet?

Chris I sent you a pm.

it was pretty cool seeing the first skater last night, and i got all excited.....then they were gone.......pretty sweet though to see slalom in the olympics

Thanx to You all for following the Cerimony.

As most of You wrote , on world wide it was a success but, we wished to be more in evidence, expecially because all of You know what Luca and the others should have done , but ( storyboard was written in these acts ) probably the regist kept them only at the last.

To be in the Olympic Stadium in Torino should have done a different and powerful wiew: all 35.000 people clearly saw them and a lot of Italian Tv covered in a different size our sport.

But all in all we thanx all the Olympic Slalomkateboard Team to represent our sport with a lot of time spent for that and surely with a good image for it, after the Cerimony.

Now we can use it for developing and helping slalom as me and Jani did in all these years,as first Presidents of Issa we planned in late 1990- Stockholm !

Good work to everybodies and special thanx to ANTONELLO GAI and ALBERTO LOMUSCIO technical coordinators of this Olympic work.

Good training for this next Race'season and a special greeting to the little and enthusiastic Adam Daniels

Gianluca Ferrero-Coniskate Pres.


PS we are planning a slalom demo in Bardonecchia ,Snowboarding Olympic Site-http://www.bardonecchiaski.com with the Coach of Italian Snow Team


other news and pics on [url]http://www.%20coniskate.it[/url]or http://www.silverspace.it and soon the backstages on slalomskateboarder.

Dear all,
after watching what the ceremony on TV, I can understand if you are a little bit upset.
In fact, from the sport visibility viewpoint, we are sad as well (not at all for what concerns our ceremony and our roles: it was wonderful to be there).

The major point that I would really to point out is that I DO NOT cheat. NEVER.

In fact it was said to all of us that we should have been live and VISIBLE for all the 20 seconds because during these period of time there were on scene only 20 skaters and Yuri Chechi with his hammer. So it was reasonable to assume to have the whole attention on the skaters.

We pumped for about 20 seconds at the really beginning of the ceremony. After that Yuri Chechi used for the second time his hammer, the music started and 20 skaters jumped on their boards and started to pump for about 20 seconds without cones (but it was a ceremony, not a slalom contest!).

Unfortunately the TV coverage focused its attention only on Checi's hammer for these twenty seconds and after that, they swapped on other people.

So I would say that we were really unlucky but at the same time proud protagonists of this major event.
It is my personal opinion that at least for people (35000) who were there, the skaters where really a nice part of the ceremony and for you all, please trust me, we are very sad.
I would like to thank you all for being in front of the TV and for your passion for our sport.
Many happy pumps.
Stefano

hey,good on you guys.first off,if the olympics were in my hometown,i would skate in a heartbeat not caring who thought what.the fact that you guys did is a once in a life time oppurtunity and i am glad you siezed the moment.
second point,i love torino(mi papa torinese,sono chicagoese).its great to see the city put in such a beautiful light and the fact that they included the skateboarders shows what open hearts the people there have.congratulations,cfav

Thanks Chris,
very kind from you!
Many happy pumps. Probably we'll have the chance to meet at the US national if I will have enough money to come there with my wife in August.
Ciao,
Stefano

Chris Hart wrote:And i nowhere found my 20 solid red Ferrari boards I made for the Italian Team. chris

So Luca is riding a camoflaged Airflow these days...