Skateboarding is Coming to the Olympics in Tokyo in 2020. The “sport”, was chosen along with a handful of others, (surfing, baseball, climbing, karate) for inclusion in the next set of Games. Some serious mixed and polarizing feelings have been engendered on all sides by this decision.

While this post pertains to skateboarding, I’m sure there’s crossover spill for each of these lifestyle activities that have deep personal and often iconoclastic attachments, with corps of aficionados who eschew commercialization. There is even an , asserting skateboarding is not a “Sport”, and should not be set up for exploitation and subjugation to Olympic formats.

As the story is presented to us…Not as it comes down, goes down, went down, but as it’s presented..that’s how we remember.  The details are left for each imagination no matter how many renderings, angles or replays. They will resonate within each viewer’s minds eye and take hold, get forgotten, drip slowly, or gush from adrenals as needed. Torch carried and passed, the flame of inspiration fed.

A hunter with unrivaled prowess, and beauty, which includes grace, stamina, inventiveness, perseverance, arrives at last on high at the image of himself. His broadcasted self. Reflected in a hundred million screens and more, he cannot look away. So entranced is he by his victory, by his own ascendance, it’s a transfixing moment, a defiance of time. And the hunter, as hero, he can’t look away. Nor can we without effort.