Like most things in show business, the Olympic Games cannot rest on its laurels. Audiences change with the generations. The International Olympic Committee has to ensure it can capture the imagination of the young as well as keep the interest of older generations. It cannot be an easy task. The old can always be heard lamenting the dilution of their idea of the Olympics by the inclusion of activities they have not regarded as sports. Skateboarding, for instance.
Is skateboarding a sport now?
Most certainly, say two Waikato University professors, Holly Thorpe and Belinda Wheaton, in our feature on this subject today. And not just skate boarding but snow boarding and the surfing derivatives, wake-boarding and kite-boarding. It does not seem so long since windsurfing graduated from a summer pastime to an Olympic sport, much to the benefit of New Zealand's medal tallies when Barbara Kendall went to the games.
Go to any public playground with a skateboard ramp this weekend and a very high degree of skill will be seen. In fact, teen skateboarders do not even need a ramp. The boards jump and twist and fly with them on any stretch of urban concrete.
Thanks in part to the work of Thorpe and Wheaton, skateboarding is expected to be admitted to the Olympic Games in 2020, along with surfing, karate and sport climbing (up walls, over boulders, whatever).