The Future is now - Slalom World Cup 2008

[Detlef Rehbock]

After a hard working Weekend in Hannover, with good results for our World Cup, i start thinking about the future of Slalom Races.

For this Years Slalom Contest i spend about 10 Days of work, before the Contest and 5 Days over the Contest weekend. On Monday i was to tired to do anything.
About 15 Peoples from Hannover helped at the contest.

I own a big starting Ramp and a lot of cones.
I get Help from Dan Gesmer and Jani with the spreadsheets,
nelle gave his laptop
from maike i got a big screen
Donald was printing the world cup t-shirts for free
the design was from Dominik Kowalski and the Trophys
where made and designed by Christoph Baumann

With all that help, i didn´t earn, i spend money for that weekend.

I think we did a good job, but not more. When i start planning that event, i had a perfect Race in my head. but at the end i couldn´t pay the perfect race. This is bad for me, for the racers and for all the people that help organising.

And it´s too much work for free.
So now i´m, thinking about next years race.

Slalom Skateboarding is not interesting for the skate industry. i talked with so many distributions in germany. Slalom is not cool, they can´t sponsor us, otherwise street skate kids think the company that sponsor us is not cool. So we need companys like Coca cola or Nissan or whatelse and we need international Budgets. So we have to present Slalom skateboarding as a unit. For 2008 we need a unique look to find sponsors. we need the same equipment, maybe the same starting ramp, the same world cup banner, the same website and we need to promote our world ranking system. everything must be clear for people who don´t know what we do.

if we find a way to work like this, i think there is a chance to find a big sponsor. if we don´t find a sponsor i will not organise another race in hannover. that´s my decision after a hard working weekend in sarstedt. good luck to all racers for a sunny season 2007

detlef rehbock
the soulstyle team

[David Rudnianski]

We just had a Riderz meeting yesterday night to start the organisation of Paris 2008 world cup, we were just all thinking about the same. We are searching for a big sponsor for our pswc this year too, perhaps we could all work together on that point, no?
Vinzzz t'en pense quoi?

[Ramón Königshausen]

....perhaps we could all work together on that point, no?

You're hitting the nail on the head. The organizers shall put themselves together instead of working against each other. One can learn from another; gather the issues and work them out....


rmn

[Mike Cividino]

let me take this chance to thank you Detlef for the hard work, I hada great time at your race and would love to come again in the future if you choose to run it.

[Jani Soderhall]

The organizers shall put themselves together instead of working against each other. One can learn from another; gather the issues and work them out....

It sounds as if there is a lot of working against each other. I don't know where you got that from...

/Jani

[Ramón Königshausen]

One goes to an event and criticizes all the weak points. He goes home, oranizes a contest himself, improves the weak points of the other contest but misses to get done other things properly. That goes on and on....a vicious circle....(extremely formulated)

rmn

[Detlef Rehbock]

for me there is no working against each other. i got help from you and i will help others if they ask me. but there is not really a together.
we candidate for a status.

the race calendar is good this year.

you can see major main and prime for europe and for america.
maybe we need to go with a light equipment to asia south america and australia for a race there, so we can show a world wide series.

we need a unique name that every race organiser will use.

for example:

Skateboard Slalom World Cup

and then
Paris Slalom World Cup
Hannover Slalom World Cup

and then we look for sponsors who are interested in international marketing

Same flyer and same poster, same prices for placing there banners etc.

I will go this way. What are the other organisers think about this? And how can we realize this?

We need it clear latest in september. then we need a concept to hand out to potential sponsors. from now on we need to find out the right persons in big companys who decide over the international marketing budget.
for example volvo
they invent the new c30 model. this model is unique and cool. same as we are.
there is a german distribution, but the decision over the european budget will be made in sweden.
or see samsung
they want to be number one in the world. they got the money to be number one.
with us its nearly for free for there dimensions to be number one in the skateboard world (of slalom). it´s a korean company. so it will be good, if we organise a race for korea and present the idea of a world wide series.
the european budget will be administrated in frankfurt, germany.

so swedish skaters present the idea to volvo in sweden
and german skaters present the idea in germany

[Ramón Königshausen]

we need a unique name that every race organiser will use.

for example:

Skateboard Slalom World Cup

and then
Paris Slalom World Cup
Hannover Slalom World Cup

and then we look for sponsors who are interested in international marketing

Same flyer and same poster, same prices for placing there banners etc.

Yeah Detlef, you brought it to the point. Maybe "working against each other" was too hard. It is rather a lack of corporation and coordination in between the organizers. What we need to appear "serious" to sponsors and the public, is a single organization setting up the events and coordinating the racers (registration => members). But still we shouldn't become too strict somehow we are still skateboarders. I don't want too see people backing off because too strict an organization has spilled their motivation.


rmn

[Donald Campbell]

working working working
what's the deal for next year?
brixlegg will come back in full swing that's for sure
sponsors to be involved are:fiat,carhartt,vans.
that venue is in the talk right now
looks as if the race will be combined with a pool contest and a hardcore death race.
this way i can ensure that enough media is present at the event.
i will also invest part of the money to bring a few faces over both in racing and pool.
maybe this event can be combined with one or better 2 other events going back to back.
i definitely want it back to back with gothenburg.
brixx will be bigger and better next year also gnarlier than it was before.
i'm not going for any approvement on this race regarding status,it's just gonna happen.
if we are able to pull a back to back triple event(the third station in question would be england then) there will also be an overall prize for the first 3 competitors in each class.
i know you hate travelling in short time periods,but..................
we want it to grow,eh?
the thing with working together is cool
i chose sam,michael,henrik,mikael.

let's see what comes out of this

also the G.O.G. and PAVEL crew is gonna whip something up for next year in the cologne/düsseldorf area.
more about this later

[Steve Hinzen]

wroum! wroum!

[Vincent Berruchon]

Joining our efforts could be really interesting!

For example we'd like to have bigger infrastructures (to begin a stage like Detlef in Hanover). This year this point was weak compared to what is possible, getting together could really improve that.

A team is forming right now for Paris 2008 organization (even if some roles still have to be precised I hope more people will be concretely get involved from now till the event, I personally cannot be as involved as the two last years)
but the Paris Festival Glisse team will probably be stronger than ever,
Some quite big medias and sponsors declared to be interested by the Festival (perhaps most of you didn't noticed taht but we had quite a lot of media coverage on different kind of media, before but also during the event even with the rain that ruined a few reports)

But how to work together? Who have time to managed this kind of cooperation and find these big sponsors?

PS: we want to change the name of the event, Paris Slalom World Cup would be only a subtitle

[Detlef Rehbock]

sure, it´s possible to bring our big starting ramp. but it´s a lot of work and we need a truck for transportation. it makes sense if you find a big sponsor, then you can offer him attractive space to place there banners.

a world tour with the same standard and the same equipment. maybe we find international brands. i will try this in the winter.

hopefully we find one and hopefully some organizers will compare with us

[Hans Koraeus]

I guess this is the idea of ISSA. To try and get some sort of governing body of the sport and its World Cups, Championships and World Rankings. The problem is (even though it is normal) that people are working for their own events. Getting sponsors for their own events.

If we would have Donalds, Detlefs, Vincents and others doing the same for ISSA we could have a playcard that would work wonders against big neutral sponsors like Sony/Ericsson, Volvo, SKF, Samsung a.s.o. They need to see some kind of a structure holding it all together. And when sponsoring they will get their message out on several big events in Europe and USA (and maybe elsewhere). They would get to name the World Championships, the World Cup, the World Ranking a.s.o.

But we need to build up the organisation for such a scene and we don't have it. We have a hard time getting organisation up for a single event. ISSA could have a part in having an event organisation with people handling much of the sports aspects at an event. They come with timing system, startramps, judges and administrators. They could handle registration, rules and result listings. This is the only way we could get sure we got a good, stable and reliable race event. ISSA takes care of the race core and the event administrator takes care of all the hundred other things needed aorund an event.

The problem is that ISSA has no budget. The budget of ISSA must come from racers themselves for a start and sponsors later on when we can prove we have something to offer for the big sponsors. For me this has been quite clear since the last slalom scene in the early nineties in Europe. But it seems few see it this way. And few see the potential in a strong and working ISSA. Sure it is much cooler working for your own event but if there was a working ISSA to help out things would get so much easier for big events to happen I think.

It's always hard to get a cold motor starting but once it starts going slalom could be the coolest thing and could gather a lot more persons than any other skateboard discipline. It is simple to practice, easy to compete in, open to a big age spectrum and easy to understand for a big audience. If you can get Alpine skiing to where it is today you could get Skateboard Slalom to be much, much bigger than that. We need a full generation of skateboarders on this planet of ours and we are closing in on it. Soon skateboarding will take over the world.

[Karl Floitgraf]

Has anyone thought about the contests organizing the travel in between the contests that right after each other? Chartered flight or coach bus? I think we have enough people who would use it to make it cheaper for everyone.

[Jani Soderhall]

Has anyone thought about the contests organizing the travel in between the contests that right after each other? Chartered flight or coach bus?

Although the participants are the most important part of any event, I think the organizers should concentrate on making sure the event itself is top notch. Travel assistance and accommodation assistance is a plus but not part of the basic requirement, so let's assign a lower priority to that for now.

/Jani

[Flavio Badenes]

Here in Holland the approach we will have towards 2008 will be to get the city of Amsterdam more involved in sponsoring our event.
They are interrested and I do see it as the best way to go forward and approach the other sponsors.
I am certainlly ready to work with the other organizers in order to allow for a smoother and standardized world cup circuit.
I do agree with Jani when he says that the organizers should concentrate on the events themselves and not on logistics matters, however I do believe that whenever possible we should try to provide access to cheaper and well located lodging for the competitors. In the case of our event that shlould be easy to arrange for 2008.
Besides that maybe we should have in mind that although we are not cool as the street skaters we are older people and we can buy a lot more then the avarege street skater who depends on their parents to buy equipment. More than that we buy cars, big screen TV's, and even houses. So it is also a good idea to go to that sort of sponsors. As a older group we should look at this other type of sponsors rather than the regular skateboarding industry so much focused on street skating today.