At the Tokyo 2020/2021 Olympic Games, surfing, skateboarding, sport climbing, and BMX Freestyle featured for the first time. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) included these new sports in the Olympic program following criticisms that the Games were no longer relevant to younger audiences. The IOC responded to the calls for change with a set of strategies contained in its policy document, Agenda 2020.[1] Widely considered a success in attracting new audiences to the Olympic Games, and particularly younger viewers, surfing, skateboarding, and sport climbing will again feature as part of the Paris 2024 Olympic program. Long before Agenda 2020, we (Holly Thorpe and Belinda Wheaton) began writing on the processes of Olympic incorporation of the first action sports inclusion into the Olympic Games (windsurfing, snowboarding, BMX racing)^[2], and then continued to extend this work examining the various workings of power among and between different agents (IOC, International Sport Federations [ISF], national sports organizations, athletes, media, core participants, sponsors) in the lead up to the Tokyo 2020/2021 Olympic Games.^[3] Other scholars are also documenting the politics of Olympic inclusion for particular action sports (i.e., surfing, skateboarding, climbing, parkour, BMX freestyle) and in specific countries, and different community and organizational responses at various stages in the process of incorporation.^[4]

Across much of this work, action sport researchers have highlighted the complex power relations involved. While there are differences between the sports, the process of incorporation typically involved short time frames and proceeded without a full understanding of, or respect for, the unique cultural configurations and histories of these sports. Moreover, in most cases, ISFs, without any history of organizing or supporting action sports, took on the role of managing their inclusion into the Olympic Games. For example, windsurfing was incorporated via sailing; snowboarding via skiing; and skateboarding via roller sports. Nor was there widespread consultation or collaboration with key stakeholders (i.e., athletes, event organizers, existing international organizations) within these sporting communities.^[5] Surfing and sport climbing were the two exceptions with existing organizations (International Surfing Association and International Federation of Sport Climbing) leading the inclusion process. For many within action sports communities, inclusion into the Olympic Games has been a ‘kiss of death’ with a loss of autonomy, control, and authenticity, and the passing of an alternative to mainstream, organized, competitive sport.^[6] Indeed, some of the world’s best snowboarders, surfers, and skateboarders have refused to attend the Olympic Games, and have been outspoken in their condemnation of participation. For others, however, inclusion into the Olympic Games promises new opportunities for athletes, events, and organizations. In short, inclusion in the Olympics has divided action sports communities.^[7]

The growing body of literature focused on action sports and the Olympic Games builds upon and extends more than three decades of scholarship on informal, lifestyle, and/or extreme sports.^[8] This work began in the USA, and to a lesser extent Australia and Western Europe, during the early and mid-1990s as sports such as surfing and skateboarding became more visible and recognizable to the mainstream public with various competitions, media coverage, and growing levels of corporate interest and investment (particularly in the United States of America).^[9] Much of the early scholarship focused on the distinctive identities of action sport participants, the various forms of cultural politics within and between core groups, other recreational users, and the public.^[10] Over subsequent years, the activities being studied continued to expand, with new theoretical and methodological approaches being developed in response to quickly changing action sports cultures in global and local contexts. The 2010s and 2020s have seen hundreds more scholars around the world studying action sports in a wider range of countries (i.e., Brazil, China, Gaza, Japan, Mexico, and South Africa) with a growing critical mass writing on surfing,^[11] snowboarding,^[12] skateboarding,^[13] climbing,^[14] parkour,^[15] as well as many other action sports from informal, recreational participation, to high levels of competition. With Olympic inclusion, scholars are increasingly examining the processes of incorporation, professionalization, coach and athlete development, as well as the impacts on local communities, and varying levels of national investment.^[16] Increasingly, this work crosses disciplines, including architecture and urban design, history, philosophy, psychology, management, and gender and queer studies.

With the Paris 2024 Olympic Games looming, this is a valuable moment in time to reflect on scholarship focused on action sports and the Olympic Games, and the approaches taken by different action sports scholars from different social, cultural, geographical, disciplinary, and historical positionings. We begin by introducing Holly Thorpe and Belinda Wheaton (both Professors at the University of Waikato, New Zealand) as curators of this dialogue. Holly grew up in the 1980s and 1990s in a small beach town on the East Coast of New Zealand. Surfing, windsurfing, and skateboarding were integral parts of her childhood and family life. Then in the late 1990s she saw snow for the first time, and snowboarding quickly became her new sporting obsession. She became a competitive snowboarder and instructor, following the snow between the hemispheres for the next five years. Her doctoral and postdoctoral research focused on the unique gender relations in action sports, and particularly snowboarding. She wrote for various action sport and lifestyle magazines and is currently on advisory groups for Snow Sports New Zealand, Skateistan, and the New Zealand Snow Sports Instructors Alliance (and particularly snowboarding). Holly continues to surf and snowboard with her young family. Belinda windsurfed, including competitively, for many years, tried her hand at kite-surfing, and is now an avid recreational wing-foiler, and surfer. She grew up Alpine skiing but learnt to snowboard in the 1990s. Her multiple roles have included writing for windsurfing and kitesurfing niche media; instructor; local and national event organization; governing positions across several action sports; and parent of kids who have enjoyed action sports on the water and in the mountains from youth through to late teens. Holly and Belinda have worked together with the IOC as part of their research, and have critically reflected on the power relations and ethical challenges of consulting with the IOC.^[17]

From herein we share the reflections, insights, and learnings from four action sport scholars who are navigating their own sporting and academic relationships with the topic: Professor Douglas Booth [DB] (Thompson Rivers University, British Columbia, Canada), a sport historian and lifelong surfer; Molly Frizzell [MF] (University of Southern California, USA) a feminist scholar, kitesurfer and PhD student; Dr Damien Puddle [DP] (Hamilton, New Zealand), a sport sociologist, parkour participant and founding member of Parkour Earth; Dr Neftalie Williams [NW] (San Diego State University, USA), a critical race scholar focused on skateboarding and urban sport culture. This curated dialogue is an adaptation of a panel held at the 2023 Center for Sociocultural Sport and Olympic Research Conference at the University of California State, Fullerton. The panel intentionally explored the multiplicities of academic and sporting perspectives on action sports inclusion into the Olympic Games. As a group, we bring a total of almost 100 years dedicated to studying action sports; we’ve each seen, lived, and felt the many joys and pains of participation, as well as the various forms of politics across spaces, places, and scale (from local to the global). Each of the authors are active participants, with many of us continuing to navigate multiple roles within our action sporting communities, including different organizational roles and responsibilities. In curating this panel, we–Thorpe and Wheaton–are excited to bring this distinct collection of voices together to highlight how action sports scholars’ varied positionalities are continuing to shape thinking, practice and activism in relation to Olympic inclusion.

Could you please start by introducing yourself, your current research focus, and where your interest in action sports (broadly and/or specifically) as a topic for critical inquiry came from?

DB: The clearest way to introduce and position myself is to describe my intellectual transition as an historian. In my early historical practice, as presented, for example, in Australian Beach Cultures (2001), I worked as a social historian and advocated for ‘emancipation’ from constraining social structures and repressive political systems (e.g. private ownership of coastlines and lakeshores, and paramilitary-orientated physical cultures such as Australia’s surf lifesaving movement). An historiographic turn in the early 2000s,^[18] led me to critically reflect on the empirical-analytical methods of social history and I now conceptualize myself as a politically and ideologically-constituted historian author who actively frames the content (i.e. facts, contexts, theories / concepts) and the form (i.e. metaphors, emplotments, focalization of narrative voices) of his narratives. Today, in my third phase of practice, I still identify with social history’s ‘emancipatory’ goals. However, I am now more alert to silences in historical sources, more skeptical of theory and theoretical concepts, more aware of the literary structure of historical narratives, and less willing to accept historians’ claims of certainty about the past. My primary interests lie in examining historians as authors, histories as the creations of authors, and reflecting on the fluidity of historical narratives.^[19]

My interest in action sports derives from a life-long engagement with surfing (more recently SUPing or standup paddleboarding). My critical lens on the subject predates my academic work by around two decades. As a young boy I watched surf lifesavers at Torquay, on Victoria’s southwest coast, seize the main surf beach for their carnivals which I considered tantamount to seizing public space for private benefit. In my eyes surf lifesaving clubs were colonizing public beaches. My early academic investigations into surfing as an action sport in the 1990s, broadly coincided with the bureaucratization of surfing’s governing bodies, and the hyper-commercialization of surfing culture at the hands of global surfing corporations. As a lifetime recreational surfer, I observed with disdain the codification of surfing competition and the diversification of the major surfing corporations—Rip Curl, Quiksilver, Billabong, O’Neill—into fragrances, bedroom accessories, and travel agencies—which merely confirmed their capitalist goals of accumulation for the sake of accumulation. Far from benefiting from codification and commercialization, grassroots surfers were relegated to the bottom of the culture and left scrounging for waves as sponsored and professional surfers and surf schools overcrowded the water. Applying a critical social history framework to these observations, I spurned surf lifesavers, questioned pro surfers, and sympathized with soul surfers (those who surf to benefit their souls) who denounced the bureaucratic and capitalist structures of competitive surfing.

My historiographic turn, however, exposed a paradox in the way social historians frame action sports: on the one hand, they typically make no pretense of neutrality; on the other hand, their empirical-analytical methods convey a commitment to presenting the real past (and present). Representational approaches can, I believe, reconcile this paradox by acknowledging the inordinate range of empirical data and numbers of analytical methods that can be brought to bear on almost any subject (including action sports), and by explicitly identifying the ideologies of various authors as well as the content and form of their narratives.

DP: I’m Damien Puddle and I completed my PhD (Making the Jump: Examining the Glocalisation of Parkour in Aotearoa New Zealand) in 2019. I have been practicing parkour since 2008, coaching since 2010, volunteering as the CEO for Parkour New Zealand – Tauhōkai Aotearoa (Parkour NZ) since 2012, and have been closely involved as an Elected Director (since 2017) and voluntary CEO (from 2019-2023) of Parkour Earth, the international federation for parkour established in 2017.

I began practicing parkour in 2008 at the same time that I started my sport studies, creating a love affair with research. Early in the process I asked myself, “How can I use what I’m learning to help the parkour community?” I quickly spun my efforts towards biomechanics and exploring the moving parkour body. But something changed when I took over the leadership of Parkour NZ in 2012. Although my fascination with learning remained, I began to ask different questions: What does parkour mean to people, and how do people make sense of their parkour experiences? What are the forces and movements that have created our community here in Aotearoa New Zealand? Where does parkour fit in the big picture of society? I presently work as one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s first Local Play Advocates embedded into local government. Parkour is still an area of interest and I continue to write and collaborate on parkour research projects, but my day job has resulted in a broader research interest on children’s play and urban play in general.

NW: I’m Dr. Neftalie Williams, assistant professor of sociology at San Diego State University, and my interest in action sports comes from my own experiences where skateboarding created a bond between myself and other young people from diverse backgrounds in Springfield, MA in the United States. Some of those identities included African Americans, such as myself, Asian Americans, Latinx Americans, and those who identified as Irish and Italian American young men and women. Despite our disparate backgrounds, we created a youthful integrated enclave which did not previously exist. We found a shared love and community through the experiential learning opportunity provided to us all through skateboarding culture. My initial research and PhD conducted at the University of Waikato, in Aotearoa/ New Zealand focused on understanding the experiences of elite skaters of color (SOC) as they navigated the racial politics of US skateboarding culture.^[20] My second research project was a collaboration with Dr. Zoe Corwin and a fantastic group of researchers at the University of Southern California. Funded by the Tony Hawk Foundation / The Skatepark Project research project, our research group produced the Beyond the Board: Skateboarding, Schools and Society study.^[21] It focused on the lives and experiences of everyday skaters from ages 18-25 and investigated how their skateboarding identity intersected with their career and educational trajectories. Building upon that research, our subsequent project Mattering in the Margins: Skateboarders’ Stories of Mental Health Challenges and Opportunities, was a participatory action research study (PAR) funded by the Provost New Strategic Directions for Research Award.^[22] This study examined what lessons the general public might learn from the mental health and community building practices of US skateboarders. I have also been exploring research which focuses on best practices for creating multi use, interdisciplinary public spaces, art, and sculptures that might serve the needs of multiple constituents, including skateboarders while contributing to new methods of sustainability and inclusion.

MF: I’m Molly Frizzell, a PhD student in Communication at the University of Southern California (USC), Annenberg. My research focus, broadly, concerns the body as a site of affective power and the role that technology plays in this construction. This has translated into two main areas of study: reproductive justice and action sports. While these subjects are very different in many ways, they both raise questions around topics like cultural identity, autonomy, and social norms. Action sports like kiting (kitesurfing) have been an incredible entry point for thinking critically about such questions.

As a participant in sports that were included (or proposed to be included) in the Tokyo 2020/2021 Olympic Games (or forthcoming Olympics), how did/do you feel about the inclusion of kitesurfing [Molly], skateboarding [Neftalie], and surfing [Doug] into the Games? And possible inclusion of parkour [Damien]?

MF: As a kiter, I personally felt some ambivalence about it. On one hand, it was exciting, legitimizing, and symbolic. That kitesurfing will debut in France, the country where many suggest this sport originated, is beautiful. But a big debate in kiting since its inception has been, essentially: is kitesurfing a form of sailing? Or is kitesurfing its own sport, like what we see in freestyle, big air, or other competitions?^[23] In the 2024 Olympics we will see kiting as racing, or sailing, which means that only one ‘version’ of this sport will be visible on the world stage. While exciting, it’s not fully representative of the many forms of this sport – I wish they were all possible to see.

NW: As a participant, I felt excited, but a tenuous excitement, about how skateboarding’s inclusion in the Olympic Games could serve as an opportunity for skateboarding to be seen positively by the public and interpreted as an artistic expressive activity that anyone could enjoy watching. I also hoped it might inspire everyone, particularly young people from diverse backgrounds, to want to participate. Lastly, I hoped that former skateboarders would see a level of connection and validation of their past experiences through witnessing a possible celebration of skateboarding. My perspective on skateboarding in the Olympics is also influenced by my privilege to serve in a role as a sports envoy for the US Department of State, where I use skateboarding as a tool for cultural diplomacy to build a positive connection between the non-US public, US embassies, and the United States. Within those contexts, I discuss skateboarding and skateboarding culture as a primarily self-guided, largely non-competitive activity that can be done in conjunction with others to build community and connect to a global diaspora of skaters who share a similar love and identity as skateboarders. My practice also relates skateboarding culture’s non-physical aspects to broader themes of education, art, popular culture, social change, mental health, and well-being. Not every person who engages in skateboarding will become or desire to be a professional skateboarder, so it is critical to demonstrate that skateboarding can still create space for those drawn to the art, music, educational, community-building, or mindful aspects of skateboarding. Understanding how all of these operate allows me to show skateboarding as fitting the needs of multiple challenges a government faces in its pursuit of creating a more inclusive society.

The position as envoy allows me to see how important it is for skateboarding to be viewed as a ‘sport’ in countries where ‘sanctioned’ sport is one of the few ways for people who enjoy skateboarding to gain acceptance or support from their governments and legislators. In those cases, skateboarding’s place as an Olympic sport can help alleviate some broader stigma and stereotypes about skateboarding and skateboarders, often affecting young people’s access to public space and skateboarding facilities. The Olympics changed that conversation, and so did the winning of medals by Japan and Brazil, over the US who many thought might sweep the podium.

DB: Somewhat saddened. I have always regarded competitive surfing as the antithesis of soul surfing and the ‘surfari’ as a private affair and a lone search for ‘secret’ waves—even if the ‘secret’ spot is only a couple of hundred meters from an overcrowded ‘main break’! I cannot identify with surfers who want to wave national flags at competitions or who are comfortable donning non-breathable, polyester national uniforms—all the more so given the long struggles for legitimacy fought by surfers in many countries.^[24] I was also staggered by what appeared to be the muted opposition of grassroots surfers to elite competitive sport. Announcements of the inclusion of surfing in the olympics^[25] immediately raised a host of questions. Had the voices of grassroots’ surfers been silenced? Had surfing culture been transformed? Had surfers voluntarily bought into the codified / professional sport model or were they cultural dupes? Why had the IOC embraced surfing? What were the terms of this embracement?

DP: For me there’s always been a level of excitement around the Olympics on another level compared with other sporting mega-events, but there was no joy in knowing that parkour had been proposed by the FIG [International Gymnastics Federation] for the Tokyo Olympic Games and Paris 2024. In fact, I have been actively opposed to its inclusion and have been involved in activism (of a sort) through Parkour Earth and Parkour NZ in attempting to have parkour not included in the Olympic Games under FIG. Parkour competition is still in relative infancy compared to other action sports and their formats continue to evolve. Taking something to the Olympics this quickly could have many negative ramifications, let alone it happening under the umbrella of an organization with tenuous claims to the sport. If the parkour community at large wants parkour in the Olympics then I think Parkour Earth should support that endeavor under its oversight, but not through an outside body. However, I don’t think there’s a likelihood, at least in the short term, that a competitive parkour format that will fit the stringent requirements for Olympic inclusion and also meet the expectations and preferences of parkour athletes will be created.

Wonderful, thanks for your honest reflections and feelings on Olympic inclusion from your positionings as active participants in these sports. And now, as researchers, what is your interpretation of the inclusion of these sports in the Olympic Games?

DP: I interpret the inclusion of action sports into the Olympic Games as a means for the IOC and their affiliated National Sports Federations (NSFs) to try and retain their power and profits in a quickly-changing global sport market. My interpretations are underpinned by my investigation of the globalization of parkour, but also other action sports and how they became included (or rather appropriated) on the Olympic program. Globalization scholarship^[26] identifies how global organizations have become closely linked to capitalism. My thesis made the argument that this link, tied closely with rising and falling TV/media viewership is now what drives the IOC and NSF decision-making. The following excerpts from my thesis^[27] sum up my position on this, so I will share these here.

This appropriation of sport by capitalism makes it apparent that the maximization of profit has become the key goal, and thus a ‘pathological’ behavior^[28] of international sports organizations. Capitalist organizations always have global ambitions and are therefore interested in grobalization (i.e. growing their power and profits at scale, hence gro-balization).^[29] It is therefore “inconceivable to think of sport as anything but an important arm of the global capitalist order”^[30] . . . capitalist organizations “must continue to expand, or they will die”^[31] and thus the IOC is concerned with the aging of its viewer demographics.^[32] Sports that were once “popular and prestigious a few decades ago have dwindled dramatically.”^[33] Clearly, the IOC must make substantial changes if they are to “respond to criticisms and stay relevant (and dominant) moving into the future.”^[34] Thus, the IOC and their associated ISFs now find themselves looking for solutions. One of the IOC’s strategies to combat this trend, as outlined in their Agenda 2020, is to make the Olympic Games more youthful by, for example, including action sports (surfing, skateboarding, and climbing).

Parkour is not on the Olympic program, but FIG attempted to have it included twice^[35] before recently indicating that that is no longer its aim.^[36] Globalization scholarship makes claims regarding the capitalistic ambitions of global organizations, including sports organizations, but it is the investigation of sport history that further validates these approaches. This grobalization of action sports alongside traditional sports by the IOC and its ISFs has been a story less about sport diversity and more about the homogenization of governance. This pattern has been successful for attaining power over windsurfing via World Sailing, snowboarding via the International Ski Federation (FIS), and BMX via the International Cycling Union (UCI) – though not without controversy.^[37] In fact, it appears that the impetus for these ISFs to grobalize these action sports comes directly from the IOC themselves. The IOC requested, for example, that the UCI in the first instance^[38] and later the International Roller Sports Federation (FIRS, now World Skate after merging with the International Skate Federation) accommodate skateboarding into their Olympic program.^[39] In their IOC commissioned report on action sports, Wheaton and Thorpe encourage the IOC to work with action sport ISFs “in contrast to fitting within existing I[S]Fs that may not understand and respect the unique cultural value systems . . . within these sports.”^[40] However, the grobalization and appropriation of action sports under the vision of the IOC has continued in recent years despite this call to action. For instance, the controversial merging of FIRS and the International Skate Federation to form World Skate in order to deliver skateboarding at Tokyo 2020,^[41] the UCI abandoning work with the International BMX Freestyle Federation now that BMX Park Freestyle is at Tokyo 2020,^[42] the lack of support from the IOC for the International Surfing Association (ISA) who were fighting off the encroachment of the International Canoe Federation (ICF) over stand-up-paddleboarding,^[43] despite the ICFs lack of history in the activity,^[44] and FIGs misappropriation of parkour as a new gymnastic discipline that they initially hoped to take to Paris 2024.^[45]

NW: As a researcher, I interpret skateboarding’s inclusion in the Olympics as a natural part of the growth of the Olympics, and their needs to change with the times. Millions of skaters worldwide have been building their competitions, networks, and cottage industry, while others use skateboarding as a catalyst to create community and social change. It would seem short-sighted for the Olympics not to look at the number of participants and the influence of skateboarding and action sports on popular culture and not want to add that level of ‘cool’ and youthful exuberance and relatability to the Olympic Games. The ‘sportification’ of skateboarding has not been an easy transition. It includes a host of issues, including competing factions seeking to govern skateboarding now that there is a greater perceived value to skateboarding because of the activities of Olympic inclusion. This was evident in both the issues in the creation of World Skate to satisfy the IOC’s existing relationships between their roller sports (inline-hockey, rink and skating, etc.) federations and skateboarding industry veterans and cultural intermediaries who arguably helped build skateboarding informally to its place as an undeniable force in popular culture.

As a researcher of skateboarding’s maturation, multiple countries and experiences offer a host of case studies worth examining to understand the best practices and challenges associated with skateboarding and action sports gaining the greater visibility the Olympics offers without compromising the elements of informality which contribute to their growth in BIPOC, adaptive, and LGBTQ+ communities. As a researcher investigating the experiences of multiple professional skateboarders, my research and interviews also show that some skateboarders are eager to skate during the Olympics and represent their country because they see it as a new aspect of their career as professionals. Whether it is a local, national, or international contest, those skaters are excited to express their love and commitment to skateboarding on an even bigger stage. Some SOC men and women reflected on how the Olympics might present a unique opportunity to challenge popular stereotypes of who contributes to and participates in skateboarding culture.^[46]

Other skaters, however, were not interested in the Olympic spotlight and viewed the games as a distraction or even hostile to skateboarding culture’s largely informal career path. Most professional skaters built their career based on contributions largely captured on video and through niche media with limited participation or emphasis on contests. The concept of representing their professional career and skateboarding culture through a three-minute contest run offered little appeal. Those skaters did not want to contribute to a skewed narrative of skateboarding careers being built solely on competition. That being said, I am also aware that there are members of the LGBTQ+ community, particularly some trans skaters who are excited about their future prospects of the Olympics.

DB: As a researcher, I sought to better understand the political process of inclusion. Consistent with a representational approach, I looked for researchers who recognized the complexity of the issue and who presented diverse perspectives. Belinda Wheaton and Holly Thorpe provide many answers in their recently published Action Sports and the Olympic Games: Past, Present, Future (2021).^[47] In capturing the voices of surfers from across the spectrum of participation, Wheaton and Thorpe show that grassroots surfers held wide ranging views. I found succor in those who condemned the inclusion of surfing in Tokyo, but I also heard voices that revealed a rational response to the realities of codified / professional / commercial sport. For example, one surfer admitted that they received a scholarship to attend university which they “probably wouldn’t have gotten” had the sport not been in the olympics.^[48]

Wheaton and Thorpe explain the IOC’s embrace of surfing in terms of its recognition that long-term survival of the olympic games depends on connections with youth. They also dispose of simple explanations and solutions, and studiously avoid romanticizing the IOC and action sports. Concluding their historical analysis of the IOC’s earlier incorporation of BMX racing, snowboarding, and windsurfing, Wheaton and Thorpe point to the “considerable cultural discontent” generated by pushing “unique sporting cultures [into] existing Olympic structures.” They “remain hesitant to suggest that the IOC [has] learned its lessons from the past.” Nor do they accept surfing’s dominant romantic narrative of a “countercultural youthful care-free lifestyle;” on the contrary, they note the aged “affluence rather than youth” underpinning surfing culture.^[49]

In sum, the inclusion of action sports in the olympic games opens new questions and research directions for the analysis and evaluation of modern, competitive sport that remains replete with contradictions, paradoxes, uncertainties, tensions and conflicts. Assuming that the past informs the future, one certainty is that modern competitive sport will continue on its politically-contested trajectory, as different interests seek to define individual sports and control them for their own purposes.

MF: As a researcher, I’m curious about the institutionalization of kiting, including how the inclusion of this sport into the Olympic Games will affect education and governance. In the history of kiting, there have been various institutional models and challenges, especially related to the federations that oversee the sport.^[50] In some places, like France, the government grants an authority to operate or teach. In other countries, the government does not offer such designations, so different programs have emerged to fill the void.^[51]

I’m currently conducting a study on the International Kiteboarding Organization (IKO), one of the largest networks of kite schools in the world and an organization that provides internationally recognized kiting certifications. I first learned to ride at an IKO-certified school, and this certification is what helped establish my trust in that school. IKO is not publicly aligned, or its support appears lukewarm at best, with the IOC. What are the implications of this, when IKO is a community of more than half a million kiters and thousands of instructors, with schools in over 60 countries?^[52] What will operations look like moving forward? Above all, how can we keep this sport compelling, as well as safe, for those who practice it?

Neftalie, you did your PhD with us at the University of Waikato, so it is amazing to see all that you’ve been doing as a critical skateboarding scholar and advocate. It can be challenging to navigate these multiple roles at times. I am wondering, as a skateboarder, critical race, and skateboarding scholar, what do you see as the biggest challenges (and/or opportunities) for skateboarding in the Olympics going forward to Paris 2024, LA 2028, and Brisbane 2032. What do you see as the pros/cons of skateboarding’s inclusion into future Olympic Games? Who benefits? Who loses [what]? What are the developments you would most like to see going forward?

NW: The most significant opportunities and challenges I see in the Olympics in 2024, 2028, and 2032 are in creating the opportunity for skateboarders to continue to speak about skateboarding culture in a way that shows that they value each other even when on the biggest stage for competitive sport. It is something that skaters succeeded in doing during Tokyo, where multiple writers and viewers commented on how they perceived the skateboarders as demonstrating an exemplary level of camaraderie between ‘competing’ countries. It is also crucial for skaters to still act as advocates for their communities in a sporting competition that devalues using the Olympic stage for racial and social justice agendas. Lastly, as a critical race and skateboarding scholar, there must be the opportunity for skateboarding to be presented in a way that does not erase the contributions of communities of color, women, and marginalized communities. This effort means creating opportunities for newcomers to see how those individual histories created the environment for skateboarding to grow exponentially over the decades.

Doug, as a sport historian who has long been critical of the Olympic Games and IOC, and also a passionate surfer, what do you see as the biggest challenges (and/or opportunities) for surfing in the Olympics going forward to Paris 2024, LA 2028 and Brisbane 2032. What do you see as the pros/cons of the inclusion of surfing into future Olympic Games? Who benefits? Who loses [what]?

DB: International governing bodies, including the IOC, International Surfing Association (ISA) and World Surf League (WSL, the governing body for professional surfers),^[53] and their national and regional affiliates, are the principal winners from surfing’s inclusion in the olympic games. Ideologically, inclusion reinforces the dominant narrative that the olympics are the world’s preeminent sporting event and that the olympic movement is a catalyst for social coherence and goodwill. The respective bylines of ISA and WSL— “recognized by the International Olympic Committee” and “the global home of surfing … dedicated to changing the world through the inspirational power of surfing”—are evidence that surfing’s apex governing organizations also subscribe to this narrative. Thanking the surfing community for bringing “a new kind of youthful magic to the olympic games” in Tokyo, IOC president Thomas Bach congratulated ISA for the “essential part” it played in “writing Olympic and surfing history” in 2021. “I’m sure,” Bach added, “that both the Duke [Kahanamoku, spiritual founder of modern surfing and olympic swimmer], and the Baron, Pierre de Coubertin [founder of the modern olympic games], are totally stoked about this.”^[54]

It matters not one iota how robust the evidence, the theory or the logic that scholars and commentators use to debunk the IOC’s romantic narratives (stories) of olympism and the olympic games.^[55] The hyperbole and rhetoric in these representations resonate with sports fans and zealots long after the fact-laden and carefully contextualized critiques of the modern olympics prepared by scholars and investigative journalists.^[56]

Inclusion has already opened financial doors to higher funding for ISA’s national affiliates from governments and national olympic committees.^[57] But increased funding brings closer scrutiny and audits that necessitate enhanced systems of management and bureaucracy which operate according to their own logic and rules and which are far removed from the activity and the people they supposedly serve. The constitutions, codes of conduct, privacy, anti-doping, inclusion and diversity, child safeguarding, grievance and complaints policies, strategic and reconciliation plans, event indemnity forms, competition rule books, governing boards and financial statements of surfing’s governing bodies bear little relationship to the simple pleasures of a splash in the ocean and the joy of catching a wave. The annual reports of these associations may refer to community engagement and grassroots participants but these references are usually buried among reports by Chairs and CEOs, profiles of board members (typically one or two former high-profile competitive surfers among a sea of ex-politicians, lawyers, corporate executives of non-surfing companies, investment bankers, senior public servants, wealth managers), organizational charts, logos of corporate, government and media partners, snapshots of high-performance programs, and overviews of competitions.^[58]

Ongoing and new government financial support for sporting organizations depends on increasing the number of participants and success in international competitions. Participation statistics and competitive successes feature prominently in the annual reports of national surfing organizations which also usually have an array of policies aimed at growth in both areas. Neither necessarily interest grassroots surfers. As the historian of surfing Matt Warshaw explains, “surfers kinda don’t like anybody.… it’s often a dark, sort of mean sport. Nobody out there [in the surf] is getting enough waves. So, whoever is going to cut into your slice is, going to be, hopefully, kept out … .”^[59] Indeed, leeriness towards contests is a hallmark of grassroots surfing. Describing a summer in which contests overran his local beaches and seemed to “fuse into one four-month long heat” that left “the best sand bars out of bounds to most surfers,” one Australian surfer complained that all he had received from contests was “an increasing petrol bill, fewer places to surf, more crowds and more so-called surf heroes dropping in on me.” Voicing opposition to a proposed world tour event at a break on the coast of northern New South Wales, another grassroots surfer warned locals that they will wake up to find their beaches invaded by “dinky structures selling trinkets, loudspeakers, sirens and flabby music…, [and] the water filled with jetskis and cops clearing people out.”^[60]

Molly, as a kitesurfer and feminist scholar, we are hoping you might now comment on what you see as the biggest challenges and opportunities for kitesurfing as a sport and culture as it heads towards its Olympic debut in Paris 2024? Who benefits? Who loses [what]?

MF: The 2024 Olympic debut of kiting will happen through its incorporation under World Sailing, which has presented various challenges and opportunities.^[61] It has raised, for example, apprehensions around the regulation of kite sports and their future growth trajectories.^[62] Kiting is currently incorporated as a water sport, but there are sports like snow kiting that we might also imagine as Olympic sports – how might that work under World Sailing?

Culturally, the incorporation of this sport as ‘racing’ has also sparked debate. From a gendered perspective, kiting, like other action sports, is dominated by men and might be considered ‘masculine’ in that it foregrounds qualities like risk-taking and physical ability.^[63] Of course, women can challenge these stereotypes, but to do so you must first participate. What initially drew me to kiting – and kept me learning and re-learning amidst many failures – was that it felt fun, meditative, and a space for experimentation and play. If my initial impression of the sport was one of competition and, frankly, daunting equipment (the hydrofoil board used in racing appears, at first glance, to be mounted on a sharp metal pole…), I’m not sure I would have felt as drawn to kiting as a sport. However, my experience is subjective – others might find this element of competition and speed even more compelling.

With all of this, I see different benefits and challenges, especially for athletes. Many kiting ‘spots’ are in the Global South, and it’s exciting that future athletes from these locations may one day compete in or emerge victorious at the Olympics. However, training locale and nationality do not always coincide, which speaks to problems of opportunity and privilege.^[64] And, while I’m pleased that the Games will feature women’s kiting events, this too raises questions from a critical feminist perspective. Holly and Belinda, I really credit your work,^[65] as well as the work of my advisor, Sarah Banet-Weiser,^[66] for shaping my thinking on this. For example, is posting a bikini photo on social media empowering, a form of expression and autonomy, or is it oppressive? If an athlete monetizes these posts or launches, let’s say, a bikini brand, is this savvy marketing and business acumen or a troubling example of neoliberal subjecthood? It will be interesting to explore how athletes will navigate such situations moving forward.

Damien, you also did your PhD at the University of Waikato with us, and we have followed your various forays into international sport organizational politics with pride. As a parkour participant and volunteer, CEO, and director of various national/international parkour organizations (including Parkour NZ and Parkour Earth), what do you see as the pros/cons of parkour’s possible inclusion into future Olympic Games? Who benefits? Who loses [what]? What are the developments you would most like to see going forward?

DP: There are all the classic potential pros that are espoused such as increased viewership of parkour translates to increased interest and participation in the parkour industry (including indoor gyms, coaching programs, clothing labels, events, etc. may receive benefit) leading to increased finances flowing into the parkour community, and the opportunity to be embedded within the rest of the traditional Olympic activities potentially elevating parkour relevance and appreciation from traditional sport enthusiasts. There may also be benefits to individual athletes in terms of sponsorship and greater public exposure.

In terms of cons, the parkour community potentially loses out on a lot of autonomy if parkour goes to the Olympics under FIG. For instance, the sanctioning of parkour under FIG gives validity to parkour under any gymnastic body, including national federations and their NOC recognition, and local gym clubs, their services, and their ability to capitalize on funding for parkour – which uses the IOC/NOC network to demonstrate authenticity rather than the true authenticity of the parkour community, undermining its legitimacy. We’ve already seen evidence of this in multiple countries where parkour federations and communities are forced to work with or be subsumed by the gymnastics federation because they have received retroactive support for parkour via FIGs claims, even though their recognition by their NOC is based on their gymnastics oversight. Parkour’s growth may lose internal momentum concerning its own community-led and industry-led development as things shift towards and gymnastic-ified version. Ultimately, all of the hard work by the community results in profits and power for organizations who have just recently recognized parkour’s value, when in the past, they were completely opposed to parkour sitting alongside gymnastics.

I want to see the parkour community getting to make its own choices regarding competitive formats and whether it wants to go to the Olympics (and if it does, that it’s overseen by Parkour Earth). I want to see the independent sport mediation bodies and national sports ministries recognize that the usurping of action sports is highly problematic and cannot be accepted by default because of historic relationships with traditional sport federations.

Bringing us all back together now, perhaps we can reflect on the workings of power and politics in the inclusion of action sports into the Olympic Games. From your perspective and different disciplinary/sporting vantage points, who are the key players (i.e., IOC, ISFs, athletes, companies, media) that are shaping the future of action sports, and what are the most important political struggles in who is controlling the growth and development of these sports?

DB: A rise in government-supported national surfing organizations, with their commitments to competition (which Wheaton and Thorpe observe were most welcomed by “cash-starved professional surfers and businesses”^[67]) and grassroots participation, could be interpreted as evidence of a sport strengthening its foundations. Closer examination of ISA’s relationships with the IOC exposes a number of structural problems besetting organized surfing.^[68]

When ISA announced that the IOC had voted to include shortboard surfing on the program at the olympic games in Tokyo, it brushed over the fine details of the vote which only became clear in the aftermath the 2021 games. The vote did not mean that the IOC recognized surfing as a core olympic sport to be automatically included in subsequent games. Rather, the vote granted the organizing committee for the Tokyo games (and the organizing committees of future olympics) the right to invite ISA (and the international governing bodies of other ‘new’ sports) to stage olympic competitions. As the IOC declared at the time, the vote is “not … binding on future host cities.”^[69] The distinction between the two positions is critical as Fernando Aguerre, president of ISA, revealed in the wake of Tokyo. “Surfing,” like the other new sports, he advised, “received no … TV revenue … from Tokyo … by virtue of the fact that it was a sport chosen by hosts Japan – rather than the IOC … .” In contrast, the twenty-eight core olympic sports each received between US$13 million and US$39.5 million.^[70] Not only did ISA receive no television revenue from Tokyo, it “foot[ed] the lion’s share of the bill” for staging the event.^[71] These arrangements further confirm the IOC’s reputation for riding roughshod over all and sundry—for example, athletes, host cities, national governments and leaders, sports federations at all levels, and corporations.

Aguerre then proceeded to list the primary (interrelated) “challenges” facing surfing: ocean and beach venues that are rarely conducive to live spectatorship and waiting periods associated with major events that are incompatible with television schedules. Small live and television audiences are, in turn, a major obstacle to large sponsorship from corporations.^[72] Indeed, WSL has been navigating and negotiating these challenges for decades. Despite all the promises and restructurings not even the brightest ex-politicians, lawyers, corporate executives, investment bankers, senior public servants, or wealth managers who sit on surfing’s governing boards have found a solution. Ironically, ISA’s success in securing surfing’s inclusion in Tokyo, Paris, and Los Angeles, means that two international governing bodies, ISA and WSL, now vie for limited commercial sponsorship.

Traditionally, ISA has been the marginalized governing organization for surfing. One informant in Wheaton and Thorpe’s research even referred to ISA as an “ugly stepchild.”^[73] One doesn’t have to search too hard to find more choice epithets! Indeed, even after the announcement that surfing had been included on the program in Tokyo, WSL remained “ambivalent.”^[74] To date, ISL and WSL have worked together to select olympic competitors.^[75] Whether they continue to cooperate remains to be seen. ISA’s commercial precariousness may explain Aguerre’s struggle with the International Canoe Federation to govern standup paddling as an olympic sport. Aguerre argues that the racing characteristics of SUPing make it a highly compatible olympic sport.^[76] Maybe. But SUPing is as culturally removed from the core shortboard fraternity and sorority as canoeing and has the potential to embroil Aguerre in even more cultural and political disputes.

MF: My research perspective is informed by my professional background in ad sales marketing, with some former colleagues actually working with the US Olympic Games broadcasts today. So, I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of media and monetization in relation to kiting. For example, will kiting attract a younger audience? The IOC, broadcasters, and advertisers hope that it will.^[77] But, many kiters I’ve spoken with seem ambivalent at best, with a seeming preference for viewing other kiting competitions on platforms like YouTube.

In terms of key players, at one point in this research I had to draw a diagram of what I jokingly call the ‘acronym soup’ of organizations involved. From sub-national federations all the way up to the IOC, there are so many overlapping relationships, disputes, and contradictions in this space. What I’ve found most interesting, though, is that kiting’s Olympic Games incorporation was facilitated by an alliance between the International Kiteboarding Association (IKA), an international federation under World Sailing, and the Global Kitesports Association (GKA), which now oversees expression events. But GKA emerged as an alliance of brands and kite equipment manufacturers, essentially! I’m curious about what this will mean in terms of equipment standardization, sponsorship opportunities, and the future institutionalization of the sport.^[78]

NW: Some key figures include the IOC as the overarching producer of the Games (and holder of the future budget allocations and revenue sharing). The other key players include World Skate, USA Skateboarding, the Brazilian skateboarding federation Confederação Brasileira de Skateboarding, and the Netherlands’ Skateboard Federatie Nederland. These are a few who I have conducted research with; each has employed different strategies to create a voice and power for their organization. Each story is unique with multiple sites because their context and sporting philosophy can differ from the sports organizations’ goals for skateboarding within their country or may concur or conflict with their home countries’ ideals of sport. In the case of the Netherlands, for example, there has been a fruitful relationship with the country’s more significant Olympic Movement philosophy. Among other contexts like Brazil, obstacles arose. The Netherlands and Brazil make excellent case studies because they allow us to compare how federations developed in Europe and the Global South, which may vary in support and development based on each country’s unique history, ideas around sport’s place in society, and previously held beliefs about the perceived value of actions sports like skateboarding.

DP: The IOC and ISFs have traditionally, and continue to, hold the majority of the decision-making power. The global sport monopoly of the IOC and NOCs is particularly strong and with their significant influence and finances, the action sport industry may continue to play into their hands and support their ISF driven action sport programs. I think this will continue for some time, however, in sport generally, there is an ever growing wave of critical thought, activism, and journalism that is unveiling the power and politics at play. Action sports are entering the Olympic consciousness at the same time as critical analysis of sports organizations is taking place. I’ve always believed that action sports need to learn from the opportunities and challenges that traditional sports and their various actors have experienced and not to rush into making the same mistakes. Many of these pitfalls could be avoided by thinking consciously and critically about the choices ahead.

At the Tokyo action sport panel you [Holly] facilitated and I participated in, the newly appointed NZ Rowing CEO Geoff Barry said that athletes hold all the power because if they don’t show up, there can be no competition.^[79] I challenged this because even if that’s literally true, the power that sports organizations and their staff have to control athlete’s decision-making is significant—it’s their livelihood on the line, so they will typically adhere to controls and decisions that harm them. However, one area of growth that I see within sport that may come to influence the action sport space, if athletes follow my thinking above, is athlete activism. There is an increasing need, and growth, in athlete-led activism and campaigns for better conditions, recognition, safe sport, etc. Rather than waiting for this to happen, I see the potential of athlete-led action-sport unions and other bodies having greater opportunity to challenge and force the hand of these organizations that have typically held all the power and simply subsumed action sports into their organizations and programs.

We’re hoping we might now reflect upon academic approaches to studying action sports and the Olympic Games. Might you offer some reflections on the strengths and limitations of research in this sub-field (as part of sport sociology, sport history, action sport studies, Olympic studies) thus far, and future directions you’d like to see? And perhaps how you might contribute to this work in the future?

DB: Action sports nicely illustrate the contested meaning of sport in ways that are not necessarily obvious when thinking about traditional or established sports. Action sports remind us of the ambiguity that surrounds the term sport and that sports themselves are socially constructed and continually emerging in new forms and configurations. In the same vein, the ongoing codification and commercialization of action sports provide contemporary examples of the processes and conflicts experienced by so-called traditional and established sports in earlier times.

Scholars from anthropology, cultural studies, education, history, olympic studies, philosophy, psychology, social psychology, and sociology are now casting their interpretive and analytical lenses over action sports. I anticipate that analyses and debates will continue to be mounted from within academic disciplines, although we can expect occasional debates across disciplinary lines (e.g. history and sociology, cultural studies and sociology, sociology and social psychology). Irrespective of the disciplinary lens, as Wheaton and Thorpe testify in their study of action sports and the olympic games, no research in this field can ignore the centrality of politics and relations of power. Arguably, relations of power reach deep into the data, arguments, and theories that scholars (consciously and subconsciously) include in, and exclude from, their research. It is no coincidence, for example, that scholars sympathetic to the IOC’s ideology of sport mostly advance organicist arguments and favor romantic emplotments, while critics prefer contextualist arguments and tragic plots. Organicist arguments and romantic plots present transhistorical syntheses of the past, present and future in which past and present are part of the march “towards ever greater achievement and enlightenment.” Contextualist arguments and tragic plots are the stock-in-trade of critics who focus on specific events and agents in moments of time and who highlight the problems and pitfalls of the olympics including “inadequate or overambitious planning, poor stadia design, financial corruption, heavy cost overruns, environmental damage and lack of accountability.”^[80] How might we mediate these competing representations?

MF: In terms of research design specifically, I’ve found the Institutional Review Board (IRB) process, which U.S. academic institutions like mine require for the protection of human research subjects, to be not always conducive for the type of study action sports may require. For example, an international, multi-site ethnography—relevant to many fields in an increasingly interconnected world—is challenging to detail and submit in advance for approval, especially when certain sites, and the people who comprise them, are dynamic, changing seasonally or quite literally with the wind. Additionally, protocols like procuring signed consent forms from globally scattered kiters, who are sometimes in remote locations with poor internet connections, or who prefer to chat over WhatsApp rather than interview over Zoom, have presented certain administrative burdens. I don’t yet have solutions to these issues, but I do think they’re important to raise when we consider ways in which we might facilitate future studies.

DP: A lot of action sport literature has used subcultural theories to differentiate action sports from traditional sports. This has been helpful in showing why people have gravitated towards these activities over traditional sports. However, I believe that the speed at which new activities globalize (and grobalize) due to ever evolving digital media technologies means that this type of analysis, coupled with the slow-nature of scholarship, makes these approaches more and more irrelevant. By the time the research comes out about a niche action-sport subculture, it’s become mainstream. In light of this, I’d like to see a greater academic focus on action sports through the lens of globalization, using and analyzing these digital technologies, as well as critiquing the very foundations of international sport and the Olympics themselves. What can we learn from the speed of change with these sports to help give recommendations to competitive formats, media consumption, and organizational structures.

Finally, what role do you believe critical sport scholars (such as ourselves) should have in contributing to future developments in the action sports industry, culture, sports, and particularly in relation to inclusion into the Olympic Games? In other words, what is the role of critical scholarship in the current and future development of action sports?

DP: Unfortunately, people forget quickly, so if the IOC and ISFs continue to spin positive stories and tell narratives within popular news media that glosses over the real issues, we end up ignoring things that cause real harm and put money in the pockets of people who are completely undeserving. In this light, I think critical scholarship has a role in preserving the real stories and nuances of what’s actually going on, so that action sports don’t blindly follow traditional sports into the Games. My methodological approaches have always been multi-modal, including interviews, participant observations, social media ethnography, and news media analysis. These methods have always seemed to me to be complementary and helpful in demonstrating a fuller picture and making sense of parkour practitioners’ experiences in relation to Olympic inclusion.

Compared to the controls within non-sport industries, international sport federations of all kinds get away with too many unacceptable decisions and actions. I think critical sport scholars have a specific opportunity to continue to challenge norms within sport, particularly the lack of international law impacting on sport at the international and Olympic level.

MF: Much of what our panel discussed – questions of power and meaning, or questions about who has access to a sport and how they’re represented – relates to ongoing issues that I hope critical sport scholars will continue to pursue moving forward. Notably, though, action sports often span international borders. In kiting, for example, many individuals work as ‘digital nomads’ and ‘migrate’ seasonally, passport permitting, to pursue their passion. I’d love to see more research on the lived experiences of these professionals, and critical consideration of issues like precarity (e.g., are the workers insured?) and equity (e.g., who can do this work, and where?) that such experiences raise.^[81]

NW: Critical scholarship’s role is in informing best practices and creating the environment for future conversations. It is our role to help situate current issues and accomplishments in context with the past so that the action sports community can move ahead armed with the knowledge of systems of oppression they may face while becoming integrated into the Olympic Movement. In this instance, we want people to understand the matrices of oppression or inequality they may replicate by their Olympic membership. Our work should examine the obstacles and opportunities experienced by participants and publics and bring that to the constituency and cultural intermediaries who those topics affect. In that case, we might contribute to skateboarding and action sports’ ability to create social change. Lastly, part of our practice should be serious engagement with public intellectualism in order to meet people where they are and support an activist approach which helps uplift communities.

DB: Critical scholarship reaches the heart of the traditional (idealistic?) mission of the academy as the critical conscience of society. Critical scholars play an important role in dissecting sport, the watching of which (as distinct from active participation) is one of the more popular pastimes in contemporary times. What precisely is the purpose of critique? Critical sports studies scholars have long debated this question in the context of knowledge, activism, and social change. Whether knowledge per se is sufficient to engender social change is moot, and activism often evokes discomfort in the academy where it is widely deemed incompatible with detached reflection and scholarly objectivity and integrity. Of course, these traits are more closely associated with the positivist philosophies and methods of the hard / natural sciences that present truths as independent realities which can be counted, calculated, computed, measured, and weighed. By contrast, researchers in the social sciences and humanities, who opine about social phenomena, and the structural and ideological forces that bear on them as well as the overt political struggles that they entail, are more receptive to truths as the social products of theory, reasoning, historicization and contextualization. In attempting to mediate these competing positions, I advocate for representational approaches which, following the philosopher of history Hayden White, emphasize narratives that clearly identify the spatial extent and temporal origin, duration and ending of the subject and which are presented with “artistic integrity and poetic force of meaning.”^[82] The great irony is that the IOC has been more effective to date in narrating olympic / action sports than critics.

Discussion and Conclusion

The objective of this panel was to highlight the multiplicities of academic and sporting perspectives on action sports inclusion into the Olympic Games at this conjunctural moment. Our conversation highlights the different productive theoretical and methodological trajectories in our understandings of the relationship between action sport and the Olympics that have developed over recent decades. These scholars have clearly highlighted the value of different disciplinary perspectives drawing particularly from social, cultural, political, geographical, and historical positionings to shape thinking, practice and activism in relation to Olympic inclusion. Similarly, in our (Wheaton and Thorpe) recent research we have argued that understandings of the “complex and dynamic relationship between the IOC and action sport cultures” can be greatly facilitated by more longitudinal and multi-method approaches.^[83] Importantly, researchers studying action sports and the Olympic Games must continue to reflect on our own ontological, epistemological and ethical positionings, and varied sporting and academic roles and responsibilities, and how these shape our work going forward. Arguably, the strength of the field is not in reaching unanimous views, but rather the diversity in disciplinary and sporting positionalities, and divergent perspectives are a sign of the academic breadth and depth that is growing among those researching action sports and the Olympic Games.

The scholars contributing to this conversation have each navigated multiple, and at times conflicting, roles as academic commentators, action sport participants, and in various sports and media organizations, alluding to some of the different challenges of these positionalities. Recognizing and mapping these different perspectives within action sport industries and cultures is essential, particularly to show the workings of power within action sport industries in relation to Olympic inclusion. As we wrote in our book, Action Sports and the Olympic Games:

A select few—mostly older men with both economic and cultural capital in the action sport industries that are still symbolically and economically tied to the USA —hav[e] the power to make decisions that will impact (to varying degrees) the opportunities and experiences of the many (i.e., athletes, company owners and industry workers, recreational participants, consumers).^[84]

Although many recreational action sport participants and consumers care little about the inclusion of these sports into the Olympic Games,^[85] and those outside of action sports may feel similarly, as Doug Booth outlines above, the complex and dynamic relationship between action sports and the Olympic Games is important because it “opens new questions and research directions for the analysis and evaluation of modern, competitive sport” which remains “replete with contradictions, paradoxes, uncertainties, tensions and conflicts.” Indeed, it is necessary to look behind the myths and contested histories to reveal the workings of power. Research on the highly political processes of including different action sports into the Olympic Games thus has the potential to illustrate the contradictions in policy, rhetoric, and practice that are rife; a lens to show the “broken promises as well as the utopian projections of Olympism”.^[86]

^[1]Holly Thorpe and Belinda Wheaton, “The Olympic Games, Agenda 2020 and Action Sports: The Promise, Politics and Performance of Organisational Change,” International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics 11, no. 3 (2019): 465-483.

^[2]Holly Thorpe and Belinda Wheaton, “‘Generation X Games’, Action Sports and the Olympic Movement: Understanding the Cultural Politics of Incorporation,” Sociology 45, no. 5 (2011): 830-847; Holly Thorpe and Belinda Wheaton, “The Olympic Movement, Action Sports and the Search for Generation Y,” in Watching the Olympics: Politics, Power and Representation, ed. John Sugden and Alan Tomlinson (London: Routledge, 2012), 182-200.

^[3]Belinda Wheaton and Holly Thorpe, Action Sports and the Olympic Games: Past, Present, Future. (London: Routledge, 2022).

^[4]See, for example, Mikhail Batuev and Leigh Robinson, “How Skateboarding Made it into the Olympic Games: An Institutional Perspective,” International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing 17, no. 4-6 (2017): 381-402; Mikhail Batuev and Leigh Robinson, “Organizational Evolution and the Olympic Games: The Case of Sport Climbing,” Sport in Society 22, no. 10 (2019): 1674-1690; Gillian Renfree, Dean Cueson and Colin Wood, “Skateboard, BMX Freestyle, and Sport Climbing Communities’ Responses to their Sports’ Inclusion in the Olympic Games,” Managing Sport and Leisure, (2021), DOI: 10.1080/23750472.2021.2004211; Veith Kilberth and Jurgen Schwier, eds., Skateboarding Between Subculture and the Olympics (Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript, 2019); Damien Puddle and Belinda Wheaton, “The Attempted Grobalization of Parkour by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique,” International Journal of the History of Sport 40, no. 6-7 (2023): 556-581.

^[5] Wheaton and Thorpe, Action Sports and the Olympic Games.

^[6] Thorpe and Wheaton, “‘Generation X Games’, Action Sports and the Olympic Movement”; Rebecca Heino, “New Sports: What is So Punk about Snowboarding?” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 24, no. 2 (2000): 176-191; Anne Barjolin-Smith, “Snowboarding Youth Culture and the Winter Olympics: Co-Evolution in an American-Driven Show,” International Journal of the History of Sport 37, no. 13 (2020): 1322-1347; Megan Popovic and Don Morrow, “Stomping the Shadow: The Elevation of Snowboarding to the Olympic Pedestal from a Jungian Perspective,” Sport History Review 39, no. 2 (2008): 170-191.

^[7] Belinda Wheaton and Holly Thorpe, “Action Sport Media Consumption Trends Across Generations: Exploring the Olympic Audience and the Impact of Action Sports Inclusion,” Communication and Sport 7, no. 4 (2019): 415-445.

^[8]Action sport is a more recent iteration of what was more familiarly known as alternative sport (e.g. Robert Rinehart and Synthia Sydnor, eds., To the Extreme: Alternative Sports Inside and Out (New York: SUNY Press, 2003) and then lifestyle sport (e.g. Belinda Wheaton, ed, Understanding Lifestyle Sports: Consumption, Identity and Difference (London: Routledge, 2004).

^[9]For examples of some of the earliest work on action sports during the mid-1990s, see Douglas Booth, “Ambiguities in Pleasure and Discipline: The Development of Competitive Surfing,” Journal of Sport History 22, no. 3 (1995): 189-206; Becky Beal, “Disqualifying the Official: An Exploration of Social Resistance through the Subculture of Skateboarding”, Sociology of Sport Journal 12, no. 3 (1995): 252-267; Nancy Midol and Gerard Broyer, “Toward an Anthropological Analysis of New Sport Cultures: The Case of Whiz Sports in France,” Sociology of Sport Journal 12, no. 2 (1995): 204-21.

^[10]Wheaton, Understanding Lifestyle Sports; Belinda Wheaton, ed, The Consumption and Representation of Lifestyle Sports (London: Routledge, 2014).

^[11]For example, Dexter Zavalza Hough-Snee and Alexander Sotelo Eastman, eds. The Critical Surf Studies Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017); Nick Ford and David Brown, Surfing and Social Theory: Experience, Embodiment and Narrative of the Dream Glide (Routledge, 2006).

^[12]Holly Thorpe, Snowboarding Bodies in Theory and Practice (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave, 2015).

^[13]For examples, see Kara-Jane Lombard, ed. Skateboarding: Subcultures, Sites and Shifts (London: Routledge, 2016); Indigo Willing and Anthony Pappalardo, Skateboarding, Power and Change (London: Palgrave, 2023).

^[14]See, for example, Victoria Robinson, Everyday Masculinities and Extreme Sport: Male Identity and Rock Climbing (Oxford: Berg, 2008).

^[15]Jeffrey L. Kidder, Parkour and the City: Risk, Masculinity and Meaning in a Postmodern Sport (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2017).

^[16]For various relevant chapters on this topic, see those within Guillaume Dumont and Holly Thorpe, eds, The Professionalization of Action Sports: The Changing Roles of Athletes, Industry and Media (London: Routledge, 2023).

[17]Wheaton and Thorpe, Action Sports and the Olympic Games.

^[18]For elaboration see, Douglas Booth, “Invitation to Historians: The Historiographical Turn of a Practicing (Sport) Historian,” Rethinking History 18, no. 4 (2014): 586-588.

^[19]As an illustration see, Douglas Booth, “Mediating Contested Narratives of the Globalisation of Sport: The Case of Surfing,” in Palgrave Handbook of Globalization and Sport, eds., Joseph Maguire, Mark Falcous, and Kate Liston (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), 363-384.

^[20]Neftalie Williams, “Colour in the Lines: The Racial Politics and Possibilities of US Skateboarding Culture,” PhD diss., The University of Waikato, 2020, https://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/handle/10289/13741.

^[21]Zoe Corwin et al., rep., Beyond the Board: Skateboarding, Schools, and Society (Los Angeles: University of Southern California, Pullias Center for Higher Education, 2019).

^[22]University of Southern California. “Zoe Corwin and Colleagues Earn Provost New Strategic Directions for Research Award for Further Exploration of Skateboarding Culture,” October 26, 2020. https://pullias.usc.edu/blog/zoe-corwin-and-colleagues-awarded-the-provost-new-strategic-directions-for-research-award-for-further-exploration-of-skateboarding-culture/.

^[23]Denis Jallat, “Kiteboarding and Windsurfing: When Battle Rages at the Top,” Staps 121, no. 3 (November 9, 2018): 137–51.

^[24]See, for example, Douglas Booth, Surfing: Greenwood Guide to Extreme Sport (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, 2011).

^[25] Please note the lower case o and g is intentional and part of Booth’s long standing critique of the olympic games and International Olympic Committee.

^[26]See, for example, George Rtizer, The Globalization of Nothing 2 (New York: Sage, 2007).

^[27]Damien Puddle, “Making the jump: Examining the glocalisation of parkour in Aotearoa New Zealand.” PhD diss., The University of Waikato, 2019.

^[28]Adrian Walsh, and Richard Giulianotti, “This Sporting Mammon: A Normative Critique of the Commodification of Sport”, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 28, no. 1 (2001): 53-77.

^[29]Ritzer, Globalization of Nothing 2.

^[30]David Andrews, “Sport in the Late Capitalist Moment,” in The Commercialisation of Sport, ed. Trevor Slack (London: Routledge, 2004), 2.

^[31]Ritzer, Globalization of Nothing 2.

^[32]Wheaton and Thorpe, “Action Sport Media Consumption Trends Across Generations”.

^[33]Thomas Hylland Eriksen, “Steps to an Ecology of Transnational Sports,” Global Networks 7, no. 2 (2007), 160.

^[34]Thorpe and Wheaton, “The Olympic Games, Agenda 2020 and Action Sports”.

^[35]See Puddle and Wheaton, “The Attempted Grobalization of Parkour”.

^[36]Owen Lloyd, “Exclusive: FIG President claims not aiming for parkour’s inclusion in Olympic Games,” Inside the Games, May 19, 2023, https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1137125/morinari-watanabe-parkour-olympics-fise.

^[37]See, for example, Duncan Humphreys, “Selling Out Snowboarding: The Alternative Response to Commercial Co-optation” in To the Extreme: Alternative Sports, Inside and Out, eds. Robert Rinehart & Synthia Sydor (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003): 407-428, on snowboarding; and David Leggat, “Olympics: Offer to change vote on Rio windsurfing,” New Zealand Herald, May 18, 2012, https://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/olympics-offer-to-change-vote-on-rio-windsurfing/OKOF57OIHGZXMBYU5PLKY7AT7M/, on windsurfing being temporarily voted out of the Rio Olympics in favor of kitesurfing, a newer action sport.

^[38]Thorpe and Wheaton, “The Olympic Movement, Action Sports, and the Search for Gereration Y”.

^[39]See Alan Bladwin, “Olympics-Skateboarding a long-term project for cycling body”, Reuters, April 6, 2011, https://www.reuters.com/article/olympics-skateboarding-idUSLDE73426K20110405; Devon O’Neil, “No rush for gold,” ESPN, August 11, 2012, http://www.espn.com/action/skateboarding/story/_/id/8253956/skateboarding-unlikely-become-olympic-sport; Carlton Reid, “UCI wants to get skateboarding into the Olympics,” BikeBiz, March 25, 2011, https://www.bikebiz.com/business/uci-wants-to-get-skateboarding-into-the-olympics; Brett Smith, “How Olympic skateboarding almost didn’t happen,” September 15, 2016, https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/53xd88/how-olympic-skateboarding-almost-didnt-happen.

^[40]Belinda Wheaton and Holly Thorpe, “Youth Perceptions of the Olympic Games: Attitudes Towards Action Sport at the YOG and Olympic Games,” 2016, 130, https://library.olympics.com/Default/doc/SYRACUSE/165853/youth-perceptions-of-the-olympic-games-attitudes-towards-action-sports-at-the-yog-and-olympic-games-?_lg=en-GB.

^[41]Nick Butler, “Skateboarding to be part of World Skate after FIRS officially agrees to name change,” Inside the Games, September 4, 2017, https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1054991/skateboarding-to-be-part-of-world-skate-after-firs-officially-agrees-to-name-change.

^[42]Mat Hoffman, “An open letter from Mat Hoffman,” March 7, 2018, http://ibmxff.org/an-open-letter-from-mat-hoffman.

^[43]The Court of Arbitration for Sport has since ruled that both ISA and ICF can run international stand-up-paddleboarding events, but ISA will govern it at the Olympic level.

^[44]Nick Butler, “Stand-Up Paddle dispute continuing after ICF and ISA refuse to compromise,” Inside the Games, April 15, 2018, https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1063968/stand-up-paddle-dispute-continuing-after-icf-and-isa-refuse-to-compromise.

^[45]Dan Palmer, “International Gymnastics Federation claims 2018 will be ‘year of achievements’ for parkour as dispute continues,” Inside the Games, January 29, 2018, https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1060800/international-gymnastics-federation-claims-2018-will-be-year-of-achievements-for-parkour-as-dispute-continues.

^[46]Neftalie Williams, “Before the Gold: Connecting Aspirations, Activism, and BIPOC Excellence through Olympic Skateboarding,” Journal of Olympic Studies 3, no. 1 (2022): 4–27.

^[47]For a review see, Douglas Booth, Sociology of Sport Journal 39, no. 1 (2022): 414-415.

^[48]Wheaton and Thorpe, Action Sports, 258.

^[49]Wheaton and Thorpe, Action Sports, 71, 121, and 219.

^[50]Wheaton and Thorpe, Action Sports, 123-128.

^[51]Jallat, “Kiteboarding and Windsurfing,” 158-163.

^[52] “ABOUT THE IKO | IKO,” accessed August 18, 2023, https://www.ikointl.com/about.

^[53]ISA was formed in 1964 and recognized as the world governing body of surfing (currently responsible for national surfing federations in 113 countries, including several landlocked nations) by the General Association of International Sports Federations in 1982. The IOC granted ISA provisional recognition in 1995 and admitted the organization into the olympic movement in 1997. See, ISA, https://isasurf.org/about-isa/ (especially, “Episode 7: ISA President Fernando Aguerre,” https://isasurf.org/state-of-olympic-surfing-series/, accessed 22 April 2023), World Surf League, https://www.worldsurfleague.com/pages/about, accessed 22 April 2023, and Dexter Zavalza Hough-Snee, “Surfing,” in Routledge Handbook of Global Sport, eds., John Nauright and Sarah Zipp (London: Routledge, 2020), 464-477.

^[54]Message from IOC President Thomas Bach to the ISA Annual General Meeting, 11 November, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2v9UubNDQ8, 0:55-1.24, accessed April 28, 2023. There is nothing in their backgrounds or experiences to suggest that Duke and Pierre would have connected; moreover, they lined up on different philosophical and practical divides of amateurism, the burning issue of their time. De Coubertin knew that amateurism existed in tension with olympism and the olympic games. Still, he subscribed to the ideals of amateurism and during his presidency the IOC selectively punished athletes who transgressed amateur rules. One victim was the American pentathlete and decathlete Jim Thorpe who was forced to return the olympic medals he won in Stockholm after a journalist revealed he had played semiprofessional baseball before the 1912 games. See, Matthew Llewellyn and John Gleaves, The Rise and Fall of Olympic Amateurism (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2016). David Davis, Kahanamoku’s biographer, describes the Hawaiian swimmer’s career as straddling the line between amateurism and professionalism. Kahanamoku and Thorpe became friends on the boat that took the American team to Stockholm and, according to Davis, the former was “so bitter over his friend’s downfall that he could barely bring himself to speak about the incident.” See, Waterman: The Life and Times of Duke Kahanamoku (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015), 53, 73-74 and 166. Kahanamoku was famed as much for his gentility and grace (aloha) as his athleticism, but one account of him uttering a racial profanity at haoles (non-Indigenous Hawaiian residents or visitors to the Islands) opens the door to digging deeper into his views on de Coubertin and his ilk. See, Steve Hawk, “Duke’s Ulcers,” The Surfer’s Journal 25, no. 5 (2016): 59.

^[55]For two recent critical commentaries see, Martin McKenzie-Murray, “The Hyperbole and Hypocrisy of the AOC,” The Saturday Paper (Australia), April 1-7, 2023, https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/sport/2023/04/01/the-hyperbole-and-hypocrisy-the-aoc#hrd, and John Branch, “Let the Games … Be Gone?” New York Times, July 17, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/17/sports/olympics/tokyo-olympics.html.

^[56]Hayden White, “The Structure of Historical Narrative,” Clio 1, no. 3 (1972): 16.

^[57]Josh Sim, “ISA President Fernando Aguerre on Surfing’s Olympic Status, Why IOC Funding is Unfair, and SUP’s LA28 Ambitions,” SportsPro, February 7, 2023, https://www.sportspromedia.com/features/isa-president-fernando-aguerre-surfing-olympics-ioc-funding-sup-la28-interview/.

^[58]See, for example, Surfing Australia, https://surfingaustralia.com/governance#annual, and Surf Canada, https://csasurfcanada.org/.

^59]Cited in, Sara Jane Hall (Prod.) and Patti Paniccia (Nar.), “Women Pro Surfers: Battling the Waves,” BBC Documentary (2022), https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct4m0z, 07:08-07:27. See also, Wade Davis, “We’d Trip Our Own Mothers To Be Here Again,” Surfing Life (April 2015): 20, and Monty Weber, Bondi Days: An Obituary (Webber: Angourie, New South Wales, 2021), 88-89.

^[60]Cited in Douglas Booth, “The Political Economy of Surfing Culture: Production, Profit and Representation,” in The Critical Surf Studies Reader, eds., Eastman and Hough-Snee (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), 333-334.

^[61]Wheaton and Thorpe, Action Sports, 4 and 123-128.

^[62]Alan Block, interview with Diogo Fernandes, The Sailing Anarchy Podcast: #25 – A Sport Stolen? Diogo Fernandes – the IFKO World Sailing And The Future of Kiteboarding on Apple Podcasts, podcast audio, September 25, 2017, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/25-a-sport-stolen-diogo-fernandes-the-ifko/id1120306358?i=1000392667031

^[63]Wheaton and Thorpe, Action Sports, 263-290.

^[64]Wheaton and Thorpe, Action Sports, 15, 204, and 220-221.

^[65]Wheaton and Thorpe, Action Sports, 221 and 263-290; for additional elaboration, see Rebecca Olive Holly Thorpe, Women in Action Sport Cultures: Identity, Politics and Experience, Global Culture and Sport Series (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016).

^[66] See, for example, Sarah Banet-Weiser, Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018).

^[67]Wheaton and Thorpe, Action Sports, 210.

^[68]Nor is the IOC immune from structural problems. In 2021 the IOC announced the completion of “Olympic Agenda 2020,” a reform program aimed at ensuring cities continue to bid for olympic hosting rights. Predictably, the IOC declared its reform agenda an overwhelming success. See, IOC, “Olympic Committee Olympic Agenda 2020: Closing Report,” https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/IOC/What-We-Do/Olympic-agenda/Olympic-Agenda-2020-Closing-report.pdf?_ga=2.219338586.2119303117.1672083707-939275426.1662993482. However, olympic studies scholar John MacAloon offers a soberer assessment when he writes that there is “no … certainty … the IOC can continue to attract future Olympic bids from liberal democratic countries.” “Agenda 2020 and the Olympic Movement,” Sport in Society 19, no. 6 (2016): 777. Moreover, as Wheaton and Thorpe remind us, the IOC itself comprises “various factions” with “different agendas.” Action Sports, 116.

^[69]IOC, “IOC Approves Five New Sports for Olympic Games Tokyo 2020,” Press Release, August 3, 2016, https://olympics.com/ioc/news/ioc-approves-five-new-sports-for-olympic-games-tokyo-2020, accessed 26 April 2023. The organizing committees of Paris 2024 and Los Angeles 2028 have since signaled their intentions to include surfing. Brisbane (2032) is expected to follow suit. See, IOC, “IOC approves surfing, skateboarding, and sport climbing for Los Angeles 2028 Games,” Press Release, February 3, 2022, https://olympics.com/en/news/surfing-skateboarding-sport-climbing-approved-los-angeles-la2028-games, accessed 22 April 2023.

^[70]Sim, “ISA President Fernando Aguerre.”

^[71]Wheaton and Thorpe, Action Sports, 119.

^[72]Sim, “ISA President Fernando Aguerre.” See also, Booth, “The Political Economy of Surfing Culture.”

^[73]Wheaton and Thorpe, Action Sports, 106-107.

^[74]Wheaton and Thorpe, Action Sports, 210.

^[75]Virgilio Franceschi Neto, “How to Qualify for Surfing at Paris 2024. The Olympics Qualification System Explained,” IOC News, December 13, 2022, https://olympics.com/en/news/how-to-qualify-surfing-paris-2024-olympics-qualification-system-explained.

^[76]Sim, “ISA President Fernando Aguerre.”

^[77]Wheaton and Thorpe, Action Sports, 2-5.

^[78] Wheaton and Thorpe, Action Sports, 123-128; Block, interview.

^[79]“Faster, higher, stronger… riskier? Power, performance and patriotism at the COVID Olympics”. Panel discussion, University of Waikato, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-eLZNB5wsA&t=1674s

^[80]For an overview of these forms of argument see, Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973). John and Margaret Gold point to the palpable disconnect between the views of supporters and critics of the olympics in, “Introduction,” in Olympic Cities: City Agendas, Planning and the World’s Games, 1896-2020, third edition, eds., John Gold and Margaret Gold (London: Routledge, 2017), 9.

^[81]Holly Thorpe and Guillaume Dumont, “The Professionalization of Action Sports: Mapping Trends and Future Directions,” Sport in Society 22, no. 10 (2019): 1639–54.

^[82]Hayden White, “The Public Relevance of Historical Studies: A Reply to Dirk Moses,” History and Theory 44, no. 3 (2005): 333–338.

^[83]Wheaton and Thorpe, 2022: 304.

^[84]Wheaton and Thorpe, 2022: 305.

^[85]See Wheaton and Thorpe, 2022.

^[86]John Sugden and Alan Tomlinson, “Afterword: No other anything… The Olympic Games yesterday and today,” in Watching the Olympics: Politics, Power and Representation (London: Routledge, 2011), 249.

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