A few questions for World Skateboarding Federation’s President Tim McFerran on the recent SLS contest in Rio

What do you think as SLS as an Olympic qualifier for skateboarding?

I think it’s a joke! In my opinion, it’s so conflicted, the contest could never be considered fair. There are owners in SLS that are also top pros who compete and frequently win SLS contests, it’s clearly competition manipulation. To my knowledge it’s the only competitive contest where the owners compete…and win. You also have owners who design and build the street course, surely these top pros are involved in the design, giving them an unfair advantage over other competitors. It’s got to be pretty tempting to build a street course that fits your co-owner’s best skill set. The appearance all around is bad. To top it off, why is it a big secret that top pros own SLS? By trying so hard to hide it, makes it look even more shady.

Wait! did you say that there are top skateboarders competing in SLS that are also owners of Street League? How does that work?

Yes, that’s the huge problem WSF has with SLS, nothing against the skateboarders themselves, but what other legit competitions in the world, of any kind, have owners who compete and win their own contests?  What’s the protocol for winning your own contest? Do you write yourself a check or does it save the company the prize money?   It’s seems more of a scripted reality show than a real contest. Calling it a qualifier is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole and claiming it fits. SLS simply cannot be used as an Olympic qualifier or world championships.    SLS is a good series to highlight the talents of the skateboarders but don’t try to make it into something it’s not. I think it’s a scandal along the lines of other scandals in sports like, Lance Armstrong, Rosie Ruiz (cheated in the marathon) or that Spanish basketball team that pretended to be handicapped in order to win Paralympic gold.  I would advise these athletes to get out of their ownership, they don’t need this in their careers or to get disqualified from the Olympics

What are your overall thoughts on the format of SLS?

I really anticipated watching a great contest in Rio, but the format slows the contest down so much, honestly, I fell asleep. The difficulty of the tricks has always been top notch, but the format is not conducive for the overall fan experience, it’s really pretty boring and drawn out. I have been in skateboarding now since 2007 and I understand a cool contest where the skaters really get into the vibe of the contest and that excites the crowd. SLS uses individual runs, so the intensity is just not there, if a skater bails, he calmly picks up his board and walks to a high point on the course and starts again. There is no intensity or sense of urgency.  To add insult to injury, there is like a 1-minute delay between runs so the judges can tally the score. The scoring is too slow and the delays between skaters is almost enough time to go use the bathroom in between skaters.  The contest is so slow to watch that it looks like they have hired a “hype guy” to say things like “let’s give a big hand to so & so after his run. If you have to ask the fans to clap, you know it’s not well.  In any of the contests I have been associated with, we never had to employ a hype guy to get the crowd excited, it just doesn’t feel organic, which is one of the most important part of skateboarding.  I think it’s difficult for SLS to appeal to a non-core skateboarding crowd and it has to if we want to grow and be successful in the Olympics. the format has to appeal to the Olympic audience, which means that it has to be easy to understand without focusing on the tricks. I hope that the current SLS format is not the format for the Olympics, otherwise NBC will have a lot of unhappy sponsors and it will be embarrassing to see Curling get better ratings than skateboarding. SLS has no fan engagement, you can go to any other sports contest in the world and they have fan engagement.  it’s actually sad to see SLS in Rio, a country that is huge into skateboarding and not be able to attract enough fans to fill a small arena. In Latin America if you operate a skate contest with these big names and you can’t draw 50,000 fans then your contest is in real trouble.

Besides the slow format what do you think of the new championship and qualifiers?

Perhaps skateboarders don’t get the idea of a qualifier for the Olympics, all athletes have to qualify, none should be owners or affiliated with the contest owners or organizers and most importantly everyone has to qualify. 

I don’t think it’s a secret that WSF has been very critical of how this contest is operated and how the qualifiers contain too many guaranteed entries and not enough opportunities for skateboarders from around the globe to qualify.  To make it easy, let me break it down for you;  first, you have owners who are also top competitors, I think there maybe 5 now, then you add another 20 or so skateboarders, who are all under contract to skate for SLS. All of these guys got into the recent Rio world championships automatically, no qualifier, then everyone else from around the world has to qualify and compete for a few spots. C’mon it’s a masquerade party, everything is pretending to be something it’s not.

 Wait how many skateboarders are able to qualify for the Olympics?

The way it’s set up now very few, maybe less than a handful out of the entire world, its scandalous!

WTF?

Yes, I know, we feel the same way.

Wow that’s kind of weird is there any contest that does have owners who compete?

Not that I’m aware of, Ice Skating has a Stars on Ice tour after the Olympics are over and of course the WWE, but their fake as hell!

 That’s not really a true open qualifier than is it?

No, it’s more of a gimmick than a real Olympic qualifier. In a true Olympic qualifier, there are no athletes that can bypass the qualifier, everyone has to qualify whether your Michael Phelps of Shaun White.

Why do they have to use SLS as the qualifier or the World Championships?

They signed a contract with World Skate but I think they should use other contests that have open qualifiers and aren’t so conflicted

 Who has responsibility over the qualifiers to make sure shit like this does not happen?

Well that’s really up to the rollerbladers and the IOC but so far they have taken no interest. 

I thought World Skate was operated by skateboarders?

No, World Skate changed their name from Federation International of Roller Sports to World Skate to make it appear more palatable for the skateboarding crowd, but it’s essentially no different. In Rollersports federation there are 9 committees covering each discipline of roller blading, but only one skateboarding committee. Unfortunately, the skateboarding committee is very light right now due to the investigations ongoing into child sexual abuse, and other malfeasance from the skateboarding leadership, some of which have had to step away from the committee. WSF has been outspoken that skateboarding needs to be on its own, not governed by rollerbladers who have never shown any interest in skateboarding. In fact, I think up until last year skateboarding was not even allowed to vote in any of the yearly congresses held by World Skate. I’m still trying to get answers as to why the Youth Olympics canceled skateboarding and added rollerblading last year, because it does not sound like this group has skateboardings best interest in mind. Skateboarding was already on the books for the youth Olympics and its a natural fit, why did skateboarding suddenly get dropped in place of an older sport like rollerblading? rollerblading is dieing out, it does not make sense. Unless it was negotiated out in this MOU we keep hearing about. Transparancy is the key to controlling corruption and there is no transparency here.

 Thank you for your time Tim

 Of course