hmm. I really have to think about that one. I can't decide.
I wonder what the critieria would be. I think that most olympic teams that are made up of members of a countries pro sports teams are chosen as a sort of "all star" roster. and the other people who are from single competetor sports and events are working more or less in thier feild to be in the olympics, as they don't really have any other major event to show case, with only a few exclusions.
So if you take a single competetor feild that has previously based no challenges on olympic placement, how will they decide who makes the cut? will it just be an "all star" roster of the athletes that have the highest reknown in tournaments, or will it be a new forum where people compete specifically for qualifying to be on the olympic team, or a combination of both?
another thing is that in most "traditional" sports what usually happens is that you play in highschool and if you are serious then you play college, and if you are good then you will usually get picked up and go pro.
but with skateboarding the way it works is if you are decent then you can get sponsored, which means anything from some cash to gear or just oppurtunities. to be pro (IE: where you'd consider it to be a career that actually supports you financially) depends pretty much soley on your ability to be marketted and sell products. what i'm getting at is that there are a lot of skaters that are really good and because they have that whole fuck-off rebel attitude and want to do whatever they want on thier terms they will never be pro, while you have guys that aren't really that good at skating but are able to get name recognition and sell products that become famous.
For example often the X-games will be won by some guy that no one has ever really heard of before. he gets there and he wins because he's good at skating and he can qualify, not because he is well known. after which point he will probably become pro just because of that, but the point is that it's not always the pros that are winning the X-games in the first place. to take another example bam margera, everyone knows who he is, and he's not a very good skater. he used to be better than most when he actaully had to compete, but because more non-skating elements made him famous, he doesn't really have to seriously skate to make it and all the stuff that he does i've seen kids at local parks do. Another big name is Tony hawk, who was a great skater, but he's past his prime and he really doesn't do the wild shit that he used to do when he was young and didn't have a family, and he just marketted himself well through the video games and such and that's why everyone knows who he is and why he's the most famous skateboarder. to name another guy that should be in the olympics, is tony alva. he was more famous than tony hawk back in the day (in fact hawk was sponsored for his team) and i'm sure that he is still better than tony hawk today. after he left the lime light, people know about him because of the movies, but he's not considered to be a famous skater right now, because he still has that rebel attitude and he doesn't want to or need to get big publicity or acknowledge for what he does (you won't see him on x-games, but he can bust all the shit that you are seeing on there.)
