PASKAPOO 2008 CANCELLED
Aaron posted,
May 13. 2008
Dear Longboarding Community,
In the fall of 2005 a young man named Jamie Mcbrian was struck by an SUV in an intersection, because of lack of experience, and poor safety standards. The Calgary news media was instantly focused on outlawing longboards in the city. As a Canadian racer and a member of our growing community in Calgary myself some other passionate longboarders and I held a meeting. In attendance were Paul Kent, Rachael O’Neill, Ross Baradoy, Tyler Martins, Jared Drake, Andrew MacCannell and myself. This is where the Speedboard Longboard Association of Calgary (S.L.A.C.) was formed. We promptly issued a media release defending our sport and explaining that it is usually a safe activity. The media and city responded very well and we saved our right to longboard in Calgary.
In the early spring of 2006 the S.L.A.C started seriously contemplating the idea of holding a downhill skateboard race in Calgary. Noah Wesche and I both living in Calgary pooled our money, approximately 2000 dollars, and spent 3 months working on nothing but the race. Our team that year was made up of Roger Weiwel, Ty Cook, Dave Carrutheres, Paul Kent and Danny Chamberlain. We worked our asses off. Our first hurdle was getting COP to let us use the road, and we got lucky. COP had just hired a young Events Marketing Manager named Chad Hason who was looking for an event to bring COP back into the public eye. Our first race in 2006 cost almost $47,000 to hold. That doesn’t include the 2000 Noah and I put into it organizing it from our basement, or my maxed out personal visa. Despite our best efforts we still came up almost $5000 short of covering all of the expenses. Roger Weiwel, a huge supporter of the community in Calgary, and co-owner of Ground Control Longboards, gave us the funds.
Almost immediately our team, along with some new members, began planning for the 2007 event. We were very ambitious. We wished to include downhill, streetluge, slide, inline board and slalom. Everything looked very promising as far as sponsor support for the event, we were in talks with the national office for Coca-Cola and were promised a lot of money. Closer to the event we realized that we were not getting any support from the slalom community, someone started a rumour about the slalom portion of the event, and with the cost of the Slalom event alone somewhere around $30,000 (more than half of that prize money) we were forced to pull that discipline. Our sponsorship deadline was June 30th, it was half way through July when we got the call from Coke saying they were pulling out, it was one of those throw up in your mouth kind of phone calls. We held an emergency meeting and decided that we couldn’t give up, we all love the race to much.
Race day, I remember it very clearly, I remember being at the venue around 4am, after 2 hours of sleep in my small apartment full of racers sleeping on the floor and in my bed. And I didn’t get to bed until one am because if anyone needs a ride from the airport I go get them personally. I picked up Adam Auger and Will Brunson (Brunson’s plane was late…oh well still got more sleep than the first year) that night before the race. When I Arrived at COP the whole group was there ready to go, COP gets this fog over it in the morning and the sun coming up on the hill is something all of you should see some time. When the racers started to arrive I started to get excited.
I was very happy with the turnout from the standup riders, one hundred and eleven, and pretty good for our second year and thank you all for your support. Streetluge I was really disappointed in, only 12 riders, but all of them were legends of the sport and I was amazed to have them at a race I was a part of, even though we were losing $7450 dollars, assuming they only did streetluge and paid a full $100 dollar entry fee, most of them were double category and only paid $150 to race standup and luge. With the unexpected loss of our timing system Noah was scrambling to get the race going, for our second race, probably 50% of the racers bitching at him, and a little help from Jody Willcock, we came up with a game plan to make it happen. I was the money guy, the guy who left the race after registration was complete, and came back with a little slip telling us how fucked we were. After I visited the bank, and depositing the entry fees, I knew we were in deep, I didn’t want to go back. I drove home, threw up and lay on my bed until about 1, at which time I took a deep breath and drove to COP.
When I drove up I was immediately confronted by Rachael O’Neill who was attempting to keep the finish running smoothly and was asked “Where the fuck were you?” I smiled, grabbed her pen and wrote on her clipboard $21,624.00 Then I put a negative sign in front of it. I began informing all of the organizers, and each of them had the same reaction as I did, FUCK. When we gave away the checks over the rest of the weekend we knew some would bounce, we didn’t know whose. Paskapoo 2007 Cost $67,400 dollars, $22,000 of that was prize money. John Fryer has all of my respect, when we were writing him his cheque he looked at Rachael and knew we didn’t have it. He refused to take the cheque and told us he hoped we would have luge in 2008. Thank you Mr. Fryer.
Over the next 2 weeks we nervously watched as cheques were cashed, wondering who would be left without their prize money. We pooled as much as we could, Rachael O’Neill and Paul Kent, the wonderful parents of Annika “danger baby” Kent – O’Neill, laid there credit on the line and extended our line of credit, and visa limit to as much as the bank would give us. They also contributed over $3400 dollars of personal cash, right now Paul is a stay at home dad, and goes an entire day eating nothing but a spoonful of peanut butter some days so his daughter can have everything she needs to be the amazingly smart healthy and happy baby she is. Rachael works for Shell Canada in the IT department. Noah Wesche gave us $2400 of his savings, Ross Baradoy maxed out the rest of the credit on his visa and gave us $400 (he’s a student), Jennifer O’Neill (my partner and roommate) contributed $400, she worked running a bed and breakfast, Dave Carruthers couldn’t even pay his rent and was evicted from his apartment building at the end of August and Ty Cook couldn’t contribute cause he could barely make mortgage payments on his house because he gave up his steady job in order to get sponsors. I had barely been to work in the weeks before the race, and my visa was almost maxed from paying gas for hay trucks and buying supplies for the race, so I gave everything I had to my name, another $2400, to S.L.A.C. We still didn’t have enough.
After a few weeks of waiting for the call we got it, from John Rogers. His cheque bounced. And we sent him what we could. It was almost half of the $5000. Since then, we have done bottle drives almost every weekend, raising over $2500 to pay down our debt. We have an interest payment of about $300 a month, and Rob Lewis from Push For the Cure stepped up and personally made arrangements to pay John Rogers the remaining funds out of his own pocket.
So here we are, May 13th 2008 , and I am announcing officially that the Paskapoo Down Hill Rodeo Will not be taking place this August. There is a group of individuals including myself that have put a lot of work into this race. However, with lack of organizing volunteers, sponsorship from the community, (you all know who you are, you who thought two boards was a significant sponsorship from a major board manufacturer) and mounting debt (still over $21,000) this is our reality.
This does not mean the rodeo will not happen again, however allot of hard work and fundraising needs to take place to avoid more personal financial penalties. Our group set out three years ago with this race to try and make sure the rapid growth of the sport stayed loyal and that if the corporate game was going to get involved in our community we were going to take as much of the funds as we could and give it back to the racers. We bit off a bit more than we could chew, and the difference is that unlike Danger Bay and the Sully when we messed up (cause most races have) we messed up $21,000 and for a bunch of kids in their 20’s we did pretty damn good considering the obstacles in our way.
Feel free to contact me via e-mail or phone if you would like to talk about the future of our event, or if you have any ideas to help us with our problems, our resources in Calgary are tapped and suggestions are welcome. Thanks again everyone for your support.
Yours, Aaron Christensen
Race Director, Paskapoo DH
(403) 455-3926
aaron@paskapoodh.com
2008 May 13 4:13 AM
Aaron replied,
Shit guys sorry about the formatting...you can read through it.
Aaron
2008 May 13 4:15 AM
Quinn replied,
Aaron, this is some of the worst news i've heard yet his year, and being from calgary this sucks really hard.
last year was the first time i ever witnessed a real orginized race, and it was paskapoo 2007, i remember how it made me want to race, and now here i am shipping off to danger bay on thursday getting ready for my first race, and it's all be cause of you, and the rest of SLAC, and Paskapoo DH Rodeo.
believe me when i say i'm going to help anyway i can to see if we can get something to go. something will happen.
Quinn Elder.
2008 May 13 9:28 AM
Munkyboi ShaneR replied,
Firstly GREAT job in '07 Heard all about it!! I am sad to hear the recent news but am proud of what was maintained, Respect, Honour and LUV for a sport that is still growing!!!
Keep hope alive for '09
Ride hard or die trying!!
(PS yer still alive!!)