World Skate Changes Location and Dates of Upcoming Olympic Park Qualifier.

Maya Kenny competing in Rome at the Park World Championships - Photo Lauren Brooke

This weekend skateboarders involved in competing at Olympic Park Qualifiers got a bit of a rude awakening. It was quietly announced that World Skate had changed the Olympic Park Qualifiers from the beginning of January to almost the end of February and the location was changed from Sharjah to Dubai.

Image via World Skate

You might be thinking “we are in November, so that’s not too bad…” but a lot of athletes had already purchased their flights for the qualifier, lined up their hotels or airbnb’s and arranged their schedules accordingly.

And this does not even include, or address, the park skaters that already flew in and are currently in Sharjah practicing at the park where the event was supposed to be held.

Sharjah is fairly close to Dubai (about a 20 to 30 minute drive by car) so you may also be thinking “they can just go practice at the other park!”. The issue is what park? The parks in Dubai are not set up for this style of Park Qualifier. Kite Beach Skatepark (also known as X Dubai) is the largest and nicest of the bunch. it has a bowl, a pool, rails, ledges, quarter pipes, and hubbas, but it is not built like a “park” that is used in Olympic qualifiers.

So, the question people have is; Is a new park being built to be ready in time to the next qualifier? Most likely. Is this a way to keep some skaters from having extra practice time prior to comps? Maybe. The X Games does it. Vans Park Series used to do it as well, so it is not unheard of. And yes, when the Olympics roll around it will be at a park specifically built for the Olympic venue and practice will be regulated so everyone has a fair shot.

Check out California Skateparks instagram to see if you see anything soon about them building a park in Dubai - that may be the most information we get at this early date. They are known to rally and work fast so maybe this is wha tis happening - too soon to tell though.

But back to this February Park Qualifier.

In case you didn’t know, another interesting thing about Park Qualifiers - they do not run on a normal calendar year schedule - such as, January to December for the “season”. We just had the World Championships in October in Rome so most people assume that this would be the end of the “season”. NO. We have one more comp left in the “season” and that will now be Dubai. So, all skaters that have been competing so far, are invited.

Image via World Skate

Then in May there is a qualifier in Shanghai and then another in Budapest in June - these two are only for the top 44 skaters and they lead up to who eventually goes to the Paris Olympics in July.

WHEW! We know it’s confusing, but we hope we have helped shed some light on some of the craziness!