Thursday 30 April 2020

Sandboarding Bites #16

Always check expiry dates on sandboarding waxes and sunscreens, they will become less effective overtime.

Wednesday 1 April 2020

Olympic Recognition!

It has been a personal goal of mine in the sport to see Sandboarding being recognised globally! Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee finally managed to take some time out to assess the efforts that were being put into the sport, and came to a decision that Sandboarding would be included as early as the 2024 Olympic Games in France.

The 2024 Olympic Games would feature Sandboarding Slalom and Boarder Cross events from the Dune Du Pilat near Bordeaux, and in 2028 where the games will take place in the USA; Sand Master Park, the Federal Government (representing the Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado), and the State of Michigan (representing the Silver Lake Dunes) have all expressed their interest in hosting athletes for when the Sandboarding events arrives for the Olympics in 2028.

The flag of the Olympics Movement is a Public domain work.


The International Olympic Committee has decided that national teams will be chosen by participants who write in, and send a 'Notification of Interest' in which a judging panel of experts will determine whether the competitor will be deemed good enough to represent their national team, the competitors will then have to compete in trials so they can make it to the qualification stages of the Olympics in 2024, the qualification events start on the 29th February 2023 and the IOC states the deadline for mailing applications will be the 31st November 2021.

Max Mustermann, a keen sandboarding expert from Germany said that: "It's a wonderful chance for us all to practice, we can still be in the World Cup & other contests but now we can all focus on making our national teams and our countries' proud."

A panel is considering whether or not amateurs with no prior professional experience, and writers of the sport should be invited to the trials for Olympic qualification for the 2024 games; this is a move that has never been done before by the International Olympic Committee and an intern for the organisation stated that this move was conducted to: "bump up the numbers" and "encourage more people into this adventurous sport."

For the Paralympics; the stairs that you see on the current Dune du Pilat will be retrofitted with an elevator to provide disability access, and future hopeful venues for Sandboarding in later games will need to meet this requirement as well, this is so that everyone from whatever background can have a fair and equal opportunity to discover this sport.

And finally, to recognise the efforts of what may be the world's oldest sport; the IOC have decided that the medals will also be composed of the purest gold of any medal ever given out at the games since the inception of the modern games back in 1896.

I knew it would be a long while until our sport could get finally recognised by the best of the sporting organisations, and it still is going to be a long while, because sadly it hasn't. Hopefully this article may have cheered you up amid all of the bad news in the world right now, or it might have made you worse and if that's the case, I'm sorry.

Nevertheless, Happy April Fools' Day.