EU Status Marshal 2011 Election: Gustavs Gailitis, LAT

[Jani Soderhall]

There are seven candidates to fill three positions as EU status marshals for 2011:

- Rob Ashby, UK
- Donald Campbell, GER
- Gustavs Gailitis, LAT
- Ricardo Damborenea, ESP
- Petr Janousek, CZ
- Guillaume St Criq, FRA
- Petr Pletanek, GER

The duty of these guys will be to review race applications and award race statuses to individual races in a fair and timely manner. The position is valid for one year (all of the races in 2011).

Instructions:I will set up SEVEN different election topics and you are invited to vote in THREE of them. Please don't vote more than that as that may skew, or completely invalidate the results.
(This is not a foolproof election, but we'll give it a try anyway).

The elections are open for 7 days until Nov 12, noon (Central Europen time).

Thank you!

/Jani

[Gustavs Gailitis]

I started skating in 2005 and since then I have been addicted to slalom racing. I have been racing in junior group, then moving to amateur and finally when I decided to race PRO, ‘’they’’ decided to make OPEN group! So I might say that I am informed about difficulties for riders in all the levels of slalom racing.

This year I was among top5 slalom racers in European and top10 in World championships. I had an injury at the beginning of this season, so this year is not full of big accomplishments, but at the same time I was able to put more effort on race organizing, making slalom camp for kids, teaching beginners and help to spread the word of slalom skateboarding, which, in my opinion, are equal accomplishments to podium places.

Despite that I am the youngest candidate, I know that I am more than ‘’willing’’ to put a lot of effort to help this sport to grow and become more arranged.

I have raced in all the main and major slalom competitions from Riga 2006 to Amsterdam 2009, so I have quite big experience about how a great race should be held and who can do it.

Riga, Grenoble, Amsterdam, Policka, Zurich – which city will be the next to hold the biggest race in our continent next year – the European championships? This, in my opinion, is the main question for EU marshals. It would be great if we could have all the candidates for European championships asap!

Other questions will be founded on the decisions of the BOD (what statuses will be given to Europe, how many ‘’World Cup’’ races etc.).

I hope that 2011 will be a great step forward for slalom racing not only in Europe, but also all around the World!

[Jani Soderhall]

17 votes - not elected, but, I suggest, could serve as an additional advisor should the three elected status marshals need help in a particularly difficult situation.

/Jani

[Ramón Königshausen]

17 votes - not elected

Seriously? What about the youth in slalom?

rmn

[Jani Soderhall]

Seriously? What about the youth in slalom?

Now he can concentrate on the racing! Maybe he's needed even more there! Go for it Gustavs!

/Jani

[Gustavs Gailitis]

I am more than certain that the new EU Status Marshals (Ricardo Damborenea, Petr Janousek, Petr Pletanek) will do their job with accuracy and we will have an official ISSA calendar asap! Good luck for them

Hopefully, biggest ISSA European races won't ''cover'' with IGSA World cups in our continent, so we could have competitions with the best slalom riders