Gene`s BMX News

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*** BMX Olympic Update From X-Games ***

LOS ANGELES, CA -- 08/05/2007
Free Spirits Wonder How Olympics Will Treat Them?

Mat Hoffman sat in a Staples Center locker room
Friday night after the BMX freestyle Big Air event,
his injured leg propped on a chair.

When asked if he would compete at the debut of BMX
freestyle at the 2012 Olympics in London, the 35-year-
old Hoffman laughed and said his body was held together
“with duct tape and zip ties.”

An icon in BMX freestyle, Hoffman is mostly retired
from competition, but he finished sixth Friday in the Big
Air event on the Mega Ramp.

Hoffman has been an advocate for his sport as president
of the Action Sports International Federation and the
International BMX Federation, the agencies responsible
for working with the International Cycling Union to put
action sports in the Olympics.

In June, after eight years of negotiations, the three groups
reached an agreement for the 2012 Games in London,
Hoffman said. It appears that skateboarding and BMX
freestyle will be contested under the cycling banner, but
the International Olympic Committee will make a final
determination in two years.

Many athletes in skateboarding and BMX at the X Games
here expressed concerns about how the Olympics would
treat them

“That’s kind of my job to be really skeptical, too,”
Hoffman said. “That’s why it’s taken so many years.
If we had decided to pursue this under the original
terms, it’s just not right. It’s not a progression to the
roots of our sport.”

Kevin Robinson, who won the gold medal in the BMX
freestyle Big Air, said, “The most important thing is we
keep our integrity.”

I.O.C. President Jacques Rogge had asked the cycling
body to assist skateboarding with entry to the Olympics.
An I.O.C. spokeswoman said that adding action sports
was part of an appeal to a younger audience.

Skateboarding and BMX freestyle would join two
other action sports in the Olympics: BMX racing,
which will make its debut next year in Beijing, and
snowboarding.

Gary Ream, who owns the Woodward action sports
camps in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and California, is
the president of the International Skateboarding Federation.
He has said many times that the I.O.C. could strong-arm
skateboarding even without the cooperation of the athletes.

Many remember what happened with snowboarding
during its Olympic debut as a skiing discipline at the
1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan.

In 1994, snowboarding was placed under the auspices
of the International Ski Federation. As a result, many
snowboarders felt skiing had hijacked their sport, and
several of the world’s top riders boycotted the 1998 Games.

Competitors complained the ski federation’s judging criteria
emphasized amplitude (height) over creativity, effectively
stifling the sport’s most sacrosanct element: style.

Such treatment caused concern for the professional skate
boarder Bob Burnquist. He said many questions about how
skateboarding fit in to the Games remained unanswered.

“I’m not going to be the one blocking it,” he said.
“I’m just going to be the one asking the hard questions,
at least for myself, whether I’m going to be involved or not.”

Burnquist, who is from Brazil, carried the Olympic
torch on his skateboard before the 2004 Games in Athens.

“I dig what the Olympics is,” he said. “Obviously, I have a
lot of respect for it. It’s an old tradition and it brings the
world together.”

If the I.O.C. tries to impose its will on the skateboarders,
“I won’t even be a part of it,” he said. “I’ll be a part of
trying to make it not happen.”

One Olympian favors the addition of skateboarding.
Shaun White, 20, who won a gold medal in snowboarding
at the 2006 Winter Games, said he would be willing to
compete in skateboarding, as he did at the X Games.

“Everybody has got mixed feelings, but it was super fun,”
White said about the Winter Olympics. “Hoffman was 28
when the International Cycling Union, the sport’s international
governing body, approached him about adding BMX freestyle
to the Olympics. The group had seen him riding a ramp as part
of the closing ceremony for the 1996 Atlanta Games.

Hoffman said the original goal was to include the sports in the
2008 Games, but the BMX freestyle community could not come
to terms with the cycling union or the International Olympic
Committee in time.

“We didn’t want to take what we had built and turn it into
a traditional sport,” Hoffman said. “That was our main concern.”

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