Fabiola Da Silva has been around so long that the inline skating pioneer is now more of an anachronism, a back-flipping reminder of the days when women joined men in attempting stunts off a four-metre vertical ramp.
Women are disappearing from alternative sports events such as the X Games and the LG Action Sports World Championships.
Of the 175 athletes who competed this weekend in BMX, skateboarding and inline skating events at the LG event, only eight were women, said Rick Bratman, president of ASA Events, which organizes the action sports tour. There was one event for women, the inline street competition.
This year at the better-known X Games, a mid-season all-star event, there were two events for women. When the X Games started in 1995, there were six.
Although inline skating has high participation rates, it never caught on with die-hard fans when the alternative sports boom hit in the mid-1990s, Bratman said. Part of the reason is that it never developed the rich culture and language that define sports such as skateboarding and surfing.
“It didn’t have any culture,” he said. “It didn’t have its own vibe, its own trick names. It’s not as technical as skateboarding, which is one of the big knocks on it.”
It also doesn’t have much of an infrastructure, lacking the bureaucracy that funnels millions of children into soccer or baseball.
Unlike tennis or volleyball, the sports featured on the action tour don’t fall under the auspices of a national governing body such as the U.S. Olympic Committee, said Donna Lopiano, the CEO of the Women’s Sports Foundation.
Action or extreme sports are run by event promoters who are outside the mainstream of American sports organizations.
At 27, Da Silva’s main competitors from a decade ago have either retired or dropped out. “As the years came down, less girls were competing and it became only like two women,” she said.
The sport’s future is tied to the fortunes of athletes such as Da Silva, someone with potential for the crossover success enjoyed by skateboarder Tony Hawk.
“She’s the real deal,” Bratman said. “Fabiola is in my mind the best female athlete in the world.” source