cross out the word "flat"/"flatland"/"flat rider" out of discussions and rules (Closed for comments)
Comments about this discussion:
Started
This topic is pretty important to me. I'd like to cross out the word "flat"/"flatland"/"flat rider" or similar out of the discussions in the X-Style committee and the X-Style rules. X-Style is a freestyle competition and flat is an urban competition. That doesn't mean that I want to exclude flat riders totally out of the event. I would speak of different styles what also refers to the different freestyle styles as japanese, european,...
Comment
Note that in the current X-style rulebook there are no instances of "flat", "flatland", "flat rider", "urban" or anything similar. So this discussion will not result in a rule change.
I agree with Lisa that X-style is a Freestyle competition and we should discuss it as such.
Comment
Scott is absolutely right - and I agree with both of you that this should be the case in the future and that we should discuss X-Style as a freestyle discipline.
Comment
I don't like this division of "freestyle" and "flatland" riding in general. For me, it's all tricks, but different styles and in my opinion all styles are equal in X-Style.
Comment
I agree with Marie on this. Flatland and X-style are two different competitions in different environments and naturally different tricks get chosen for each. Having a full gym one would be a fool not to show a lot of coasts, glides, drag seats and other tricks that take a lot of space. As it is some tricks that were shown at Unicon were new to both flatland and freestyle and were premiered in both competitions – having this discussion only serves to discourage people from showing new tricks and to disqualify tricks we don't like.
However given that there are multiple different styles present in the competition it would make more sense to expand the judging criteria beyond "difficulty', but that's a different discussion.
Comment
I don't know why you're thinking that this discussion only serves to discourage people from showing new tricks and to disqualify tricks we don't like... I love X-Sytle because people are showing new tricks! Tricks, which are not safe enough to be shown in freestyle, because dismounts are a factor here or tricks, which are still in development - X-Style offers an ideal platform for all this and that's great. And by the way, I also love it to see unispins and rolls in freestyle ;) But I wouldn't call them flat tricks, because for me tricks are just tricks and only the context in which they are shown is freestyle or flat for me. For this reason I am of the opinion that we should discuss X-Style as a freestyle discipline, because the context is freestyle. But of course I am happy when many different trick styles find their way into this discipline and a high technical trick level is shown.
Comment
Jan, I agree it's awesome to have as many new tricks being shown as possible. I have heard people discuss if a trick is "flatland" or "freestyle" though and I do think a lot of riders have been confused with which tricks to show in each competition. I also think a number of "freestylers" have felt "flatlanders" have intruded on "their" competition and there has been bad blood in the past. It might actually make a lot of sense to specifically mention in the rules that we welcome tricks of all styles.
Comment
I would like to see a sentence in the rules that says that we welcome all styles.
Comment
I agree. The point of X-Style when it was created (from what I was told the first year it was introduced to me) was not to make another freestyle event, it was to create an environment where freestyle and flatland riders can compete together.
We don't have to explicitly state "flatland", nor do I think we have to say "freestyle event". We can just say its a competition open to all styles.
Comment
I know that people want to keep the word flat out of discussions, but regardless of this, there will still be flat riders in the competitions. In the ones I have directed, it's usually about half freestylers and half flat riders.
So while I don't think there is a need to put the word "flat" in the rules, I think we should keep it in discussions as it is relevant to the progression of the sport. The gap between these two styles is becoming smaller, and I think that X-Style is a conducive environment for bridging this gap and progressing the sport.
Comment
Could we change the phrase:
"X-Style is a freestyle event…" to "X-style is an artistic event welcoming all styles"?
Comment
Definition:
X-Style is a freestyle event for riders to show off their most difficult skills (old proposal)
X-Style is an artistic event for riders of all styles to show off their most difficult skills.
Comment
I would leave artistic out of it, as it might be confused with performance/artistic part of freestyle.
Maybe just "X-Style is an event for riders of all styles to show off their most difficult skills."
Comment
In my opinion X-Style is a Freestyle event cause that's where it's placed in the rulebook. But i'm fine leaving out the word Freestyle. I agree with Dani that we shouldn't mix in the word artistic.
Comment
I like the new version, Danielle.
Comment
I've made the change in the "definition" proposal.