*** Will The IOC Welcome SkateBoarders? ***

Salt Lake City, Utah -- 09/23/2007
At the AST Dew Tour in Salt Lake City, People wonder
with the first Olympic medals set to be awarded next year in BMX
supercross, the question remains if skateboarders and BMX riders
will be welcomed in masse come 2012.

The International Olympic Committee has started talks with the
International Cycling Union about taking over as a governing body
for skateboarding. That would set the stage for it to be added for
the London Games.

"It's highly likely,'' USA Cycling CEO Stephen Johnson said.
"I think it's almost guaranteed. I think the IOC has made a
commitment to add sports that probably would be considered
more relevant to today's youth."

The IOC wants to work with an existing governing body and
the UCI makes sense for a AST Dew Tour in SLC sport on wheels.
Another part of the plan is to set up a half-pipe in the middle of a
velodrome so the same facility could be used for skateboarding
and cycling.

Several Dew Tour athletes said skateboarding and BMX
immediately would become two of the most popular Olympic sports.
The success of snowboarding at the Winter Olympics has not gone
unnoticed.

"I think it'd be an edge to the Olympics that they're actually kind
of losing right now,'' skateboarder Pierre-Luc Gagnon said. "If you
ask me, skateboarding's so much more appealing than any of the
track and field events and so much more creative."

Not that there aren't detractors. Rune Glifberg said he would
advocate against skateboarding's inclusion in the Olympics
and would compete "just to put Denmark on the map."

"Skateboarding doesn't need the Olympics,''
Glifberg said. "Skateboarding's fine the way it is."

If this weekend is any indication, the sports certainly have an
international footprint. There were skateboarders competing in
Salt Lake City from the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Denmark, France,
Brazil and Sweden.

Dew Tour Rain and Records:

The Dew Tour will release attendance figures today, but Saturday
was estimated to be the best attended day in tour history. The tour
was averaging better than 53,000 fans in each city this season, but
Salt Lake is expected to top those numbers.

The rain washed out the BMX supercross finals and forced
the postponement of the skateboard park finals until today.

ACC - http://www.astdewtour.com
ACCC - http://www.genesbmx.com/2008-bmx-olympics.html