Saturday July, the 3rd will start the new World Cup season 2009 in Oroslavje, Croatia.
With normally 7 stages, but due to the crises and the lake of motivation and cooperation at the FIS level, we will finally have only 4 stages and the World Championship at Piglio, Italy in September.
Rollerski wants to play as his big brother but without the budget and organisation.
In one country, Italy, rollerski is really a discipline with a federation, a budget, a team, but if we look carefully worldwide, rollerski remains a training sport…
It’s a pity, in the 3 ultimate’s World Champions we were having Giorgio Di Centa 2007, Vincent Vittoz 2003 and Jan Jacob Verdenius 2000, all of them are/were competing at the top level in winter, Di Centa is Olympian, Vittoz won the World Championship pursuit in 2003 after is title in rollerski and the Norwegian Verdenius was the first XC Sprint World Cup winner ever!
So in winter media and sponsors are focused on them and in summer, they look like poor amateurs evoluting on an amateur circuit…
Maybe we should start to think that the image of cross country skiing does not exist only in winter…
Aure and Kristiansund in Norway will host the World Championship in 2011, maybe that Norway, the leading country will understand importance of the discipline for the development of xc-ski…
But it seems that Croatia with live coverage via National TV of the ultimate World Championship, Italy with Di Centa and national team members always present on the main events and on the World Cup stages to promote themselves or France with Vittoz and the national circuit Rollerski Tour or Macadam’ski understood it 15 years ago…
Anyway a news season will start and we will see if we get communication and PR in feedback…
But, I guess that future of rollerski should find is own way, with a short circuit of 3, 4 shows/stages more like biathlon rollerski cup with extreme simple rules and friendly TV formats still inside FIS but with a new leader helped by an ambitious team.
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1 comment:
i agree! But the most important thing: keep the fast wheels! The rollerskisport will it selfs without those. If FIS really wants to remove the fast wheels and make the sport boring. Why do not the rollerskiers ask the international rollersports federation about help?? Maybe thats the way to go??
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