Skate Culture Article #7 - There's no competition.

One of the things I love about skateboarding is the lack of rules and competition. When I talk about competition, I mean structured first, second and thirds, medals, leagues and points. This was a bit of a stumbling block for us as SkateboardScotland when we were trying to gain SportScotland

Skateboarding is just about your board and how you use it on the terrain of your choice. I'm not sure how it works in bigger countries but across Scotland we have skatepark specific events which are as close as we get to competition and generally people travel from all over the country to go to the events so a lot of familiar faces are always about. There is the Livi Skate Party, there is our War of the Thistles, there's a competition being organised at the Edinburgh park and today was the third annual "Killin' the Kirk" competition at Falkirk Skatepark.

We normally do a jam format which means that everyone skates at the same time or in groups and judges pick out the stand out skaters to go forward to finals. Stand out skaters are necessarily the ones doing the biggest or most technical tricks, standing out is usually just people who push themselves past their normal boundaries. The winners usually get product prizes in the form of boards, clothing, things we've managed to get donated from shops and companies in the industry. Some of our bigger competitions have cash prizes but again this is just if someone stands out or does something particularly impressive, they'll get money thrown at them.

In Falkirk today we got a brilliant turn out again from all over the country with some brilliant skating going down. If it's brought down to what it is essentially about, it could be better described as an organised get-together to assemble a load of skaters in one place for big fun skate session. We just wrap a few prizes around it to give it a bit of substance. No one gets paid to organise it and it all get's done on good will and for the love of the sport.

Skateboarding does have some big competitions in the form of things like the X Games and the like but even at these highest levels, there is a mutual respect of competitors who are usually just feeding off each other, pushing themselves and trying to put on a good show. No ruthless cut throat striving to be the best of the best. These big competitions do serve brilliantly to prompt the sport to outsiders giving it a world stage and keep money coming in which essentially helps the sport taking the dives in public conciousness that it has done in the past.

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Notes on the Picture...
This is Kieran throwing a huge frontside ollie out of the Falkirk mini ramp. I actually had to ask him to do it a second time as he managed to get out the top of the frame on the first one.

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Notes on the Skate Culture Articles...
I've written a couple of these etries to give a wee bit of an insight into some of the nuances of skateboarding from the inside. They are of varying quality that may lead up to something bigger. You can check any of the others by entering tagged skateculturearticle by tractorfactoryphotos into the BlipSearch.