Chariots of Fire: The skate kids going for Olympic gold

The Independent published an article in The Independent Extra on 23rd July about the future UK Olympic skateboarders.

Here they are at last.....The Stiletto Bindings!

Those crazy fashion people at Balenciaga have gone and designed this 'IT' shoe for their Fall 07 collection. It's being called the 'lego shoe' and a pair will cost you $4175USD, thats about £2000. Nobody seems to have realised the designers just made a shoe out of some old snowboard bindings.

School sports initiative to aid 2012 build-up

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced the Government is investing £100m in a sports drive that includes the launch an annual national school sports week. The aim is to give every child the chance of five hours of sport every week as part of a drive for a healthier Britain.

He has called for a "united team effort" in the build up to 2012 to make sport a part of every child's daily life. As well as offering greater opportunities to participate in sports both at and outside schools, plans include a greater emphasis on competition within and between schools, a network of competition managers and a new National School Sports Week.

The funding will provide up to five hours of sport a week for all pupils and three hours for 16 to 19-year-olds, a National School Sport Week, championed by Dame Kelly Holmes where all schools will be encouraged to run sports days and inter-school tournaments, and a network of 225 competition managers across the country to work with primary and secondary schools to increase the amount of competitive sport they offer.

Announcing the initiative the Prime Minister says: "We need to put school sport back where it belongs, playing a central role in the school day. I was lucky enough to have primary and secondary schools that had sport at the centre of their ethos. I want every child to have that opportunity to take part. Watching sport is a national pastime. Talking about sport is a national obsession. But now we need to make taking part in sport a national characteristic."

What if.......

Funny Nike SB commercial - Watch more free videos

IOC says must capture teenagers' tastes to survive

The International Olympic Committee must adapt to changing attitudes of young people if it wants to stay relevant and battle falling interest among youths for the Olympic Games, its president said on Tuesday. With the average age of Olympics viewers increasing in recent years and youngsters turning fast to other sports competitions like the X Games, the IOC has to change, Jacques Rogge said. Speaking at the opening ceremony of the IOC's 119th session in Guatemala City, Rogge said staging Youth Olympics, an event designed to raise the level of enthusiasm and participation of teenagers, was a step in the right direction. "Just as the IOC has known, over our 100-plus years of existence, how to move with the times ... so we must now adapt to meet the taste of today's young generation," Rogge said. The IOC has tried to counter the current trend by introducing disciplines in the winter and summer Olympic programme that are popular with young people, including BMX-cross cycling, skicross and snowboarding. It has taken a blow with the rising popularity of the annual summer and winter X Games, their 13th summer edition coming up next month, offering such sports as BMX freestyle, surfing and Moto X racing. "The Youth Olympic Games project is also on our agenda this week," Rogge told an audience that included IOC members, heads of internation sports federations and the president of Guatemala Oscar Berger. "For our movement, and all that it stands for, to remain relevant into the next decade and beyond, we must find ways to keep the appeal of our event," he said. The IOC though is not expected to limit itself to the Youth Olympics, should they be approved by the session as a project to pursue. It is also looking to bolster the popularity of the 2012 London Olympics by squeezing skateboarding into the programme, not as a new sport but potentially as a new discipline falling under the control of the International Cycling Union. (Source: Guardian.co.uk)