Ttraces its origins to surfing and skateboarding American counterculture in the 1960s, freestyle is a protean sporting practice with alternative values that today applies to many more conventional activities (soccer, canoeing, etc.). The phenomenon is fascinating because of the free, creative and anti-competitive nature of freestyle, previously often denounced as uncontrolled and dangerous by the same federal structures that now want to integrate it to revitalize their sports.
Surfing, skateboarding, BMX and even breaking will be represented at the fair Olympic Games Paris 2024, much to the consternation of a section of the freestyle community who are concerned about their culture, which is in danger of being subverted by federal politics. The integration of freestyle into the Olympic Games therefore remains a contested social process.
Traditional sports customs interrupted
Since the 2000s, French institutional sports have lost their appeal. In the 2022 study, Cdes notes a steady increase in the number of licensees and deinstitutionalization of practices that accelerated after the health crisis. The traditional model of monopractice focused on competition and surveillance is being undermined by hedonistic athletes. The result: the federal world lost 70,000 licensees in 2018; the trend was confirmed in 2020 (– 7% of licenses).
READ ALSO Summer Olympic sports: 8.8 million licensedAt the same time, independent sports, outside of competition and outdoors, are becoming more and more popular. After the pandemic, the number of surfers (about a million in France) and skateboarders (between 1 and 2 million) multiplied. In 2022, 49% of high school students reported skateboarding, rollerblading or rollerblading, compared to, for example, 41% for tennis. According to Injep, urban skiing is in the top 5 most popular activities for young people.
But if the so-called freestyle sports have become popular, it seems that their federations have not taken full advantage of them. Surprisingly, the French Skating Federation has only seen its licensees increase by 3.8% since 2016 (63,231 in 2022) and represents only 2.86% of licensees in individual sports, far behind golf and swimming. The skateboard division gathers only about 3,000 licensees and 150 clubs, while France has more than 2,500 skateparks, and the city of Bordeaux itself gathers about 35,000 skaters. For its part, the French Surfing Federation saw a 15.1% drop in its license holders (14,947 in 2022), while all natural sports federations saw a drop of just 1.7%. Surfing represents only 0.74% of licensed natural sports… But then, what are the reasons for such weak federal oversight of freestyle?
Freestyle: a cultural revolution
Establishing and following a regulatory code is the very essence of federal sport. Because without rules there can be no sporting question or order, record, victory or defeat. According to sociologist Pierre Parlebas, sport concerns motor situations codified in the form of competition and institutionalized. However, freestyle is not defined solely by physical activities, and even less by rules.
READ ALSO In which Olympic sports did France win the most medals? In his work Generational slides, sociologist Alain Loret, the beginning of the sports revolution dates back to the 1950s when certain communities, such as the “rogue surfers” from California, associated their physical practice with the desire for marginalization, deviance and social protest. A new sports (counter)culture with the values of creativity, freedom and brotherhood is gradually spreading. l’writer Jack Kerouac, rebellious surfer Miki Dora (aka Da Cat) or even skateboarder Jay Adams from Z-Boys embody this new wave around the world. In France, Alain Loret evokes the navigator and writer Bernard Moitessier, who refused to cross the finish line to win the first solo sailing race around the world, preferring to “let himself be carried” towards the Pacific, declaring: “They will not understand. (… ) will he be able to feel that the rules of the game have changed little by little, that the old ones have disappeared and given way to new, second-order ones? extreme and through the desire to opt for alternative models that break the boundaries of traditional sports.
Are freestyle and Olympic style compatible?
At the end of many years of misunderstanding and tension (caused, for example, by the abuse of urban space as a field of practice), freestyle gained a wide social affirmation (economy, art, fashion, media, etc.). Some will conclude that the 2020 Olympic Games are the best social and economic prize.
The struggle over the authenticity of freestyle could therefore turn out to be more ideological than realistic. As evidence, the freestyle industry did not wait for the Olympics to develop media coverage, professionalization and commercialization of its practices in the 1990s through major events like the X-Games. In the process, the IOC logically integrated these practices, just like many other sports, to regain the lost audience of younger generations for the Olympic Games. Therefore, if the phenomenon of institutionalization of freestyle (albeit late) does not appear as a socio-historical aberration, its originality comes rather from the protest it provokes.
READ ALSO E-sport, the future discipline of the Olympic Games? Two main reasons can explain this and show the tension in the positions of both sides. First, the alternative model it supports freestylers, closer to a philosophy of life than to sport, is difficult to reconcile with the disciplined and undifferentiated regime of the Olympic Games whose motto is “Faster, more, stronger – together”. Therefore, many people see the Olympics the threat of normalization freestyle at the expense of your creativity and freedom. Lecturer Magali Sizorn wonders about the future of surfing, skateboarding and breaking, which could suffer the same fate as skating and gymnastics once they are standardized by federal rules, making training more athletic than artistic.
Some conflicts still erupt between the freestyle community and individual federations ahead of the Olympics Paris 2024 (conducting training, selection of drivers, mandatory wearing of official clothes, architecture of sports facilities, etc.). They reveal contrasts in values (differentiation vs. standardization), in practicing practices (free expression vs. evaluation criteria), or in the ultimate desired goal (collective satisfaction vs. individual performance).
READ ALSO Paris 2024 Olympics: perimeters, traffic… Paris shut down before the opening ceremonySecond, the integration of freestyle into the Olympic Games since the end of the 1990s was done without respecting its cultural peculiarities. Snowboarding is included as a skiing discipline, windsurfing is included in sailing, and BMX is included in cycling. The authorities are therefore criticized for ignorance and lack of hearing, leading to the establishment of a disjointed federal vision. How can traditionally autonomous practices be harmoniously integrated into federal structures with which to this day there are endemic disagreements?
If the (necessary) desire to modernize the Olympic Games in a new socio-cultural and economic context favors the inclusion of new practices, marriage still seems complicated between a community concerned about the future of its lifestyle and a federal world that does not recognize freestyle as a real opportunity to fundamentally reform its model, even though it is being disrupted by new, more agile and disruptive players in the sports market (such as SportTech). The institutionalization of freestyle therefore continued to fuel debates over the delicate balance to be struck between official recognition and cultural integrity.
*Jean-Sébastien Lacam is a management teacher at the Essca School of Management