Part of the original “goals and aims” of the WFSA upon its founding was “to address the needs of freestyle skateboarders as athletes, artists, and individuals [and] the primary function of the WFSA is to promote contest activity and participation.”
And while it is without question that contest attendance has increased rapidly in the last five years, this rapid growth has left the contest calendar feeling like something of a jumbled mess. There’s very little structure and meaning, and it’s all too easy for one giant contest (such as the World Round Up of 2014-2019, or Euro Freestyle/World Freestyle of 2021-2024) to completely overshadow all other events, reducing the number of attendees at more regional competitions. After all, who would go to a smaller contest when all your friends – and the money and prestige – can be found at the biggest one of the year?
It was an attempt to alleviate this that led to the first pass at a “ranking system” back in 2018, and in the years since, that initial attempt at creating structure has been refined and tested with multiple years of contest data until it was finally ready for publishing.
The system is based around one simple idea: each skater gets one point for each skater he or she beats in their division at every competition. This is tallied up, and the more points you accrue, the higher up the rankings you go. This means it doesn’t matter if it’s a small grass-roots one-day event or a giant corporate four-day marathon – every competition will earn you points, and those points will scale based on the size of the event.
However, if the system was that simple, it would be easily broken – so some checks and balances have been put in place.
Adjustment one: mixed pro/am events would allow seasoned pros to quickly accumulate points by beating inexperienced amateurs. So, in these mixed events, a pro only gets half a point for each amateur they beat. But, on the flip side, if an amateur beats a pro, the amateur gets double points.
Adjustment two: rookie divisions do not contribute towards the ranking system at all. Not only does this take the pressure off newcomers, but it disincentivises people from attempting to stay in the rookie division longer than they should.
Adjustment three: not all contests have Women’s or Masters divisions, so skaters in these divisions will collect points from any event they enter – someone who normally skates in the Masters division will collect points as an Am when skating against Ams, and a Woman entered into the Pro division will collect points as if they were any other pro. These points then go towards their totals in their usual divisions.
Adjustment four: skaters who change division mid-season will continue to gather points in the division they started the year in, regardless of the division they compete in. In other words, if you start 2025 as an amateur and decided to compete with the pros from your second competition onwards, your points will continue to count towards your placement in the amateur division.
There’s also issue of national bias; no matter how good the judges and the judging system, German judges and German events will tend to favour the German style, Japanese judges and Japanese events will tend to favour the Japanese style, and so on. We also want to encourage travel and international interaction, while also not unfairly penalising people who live in regions that have under-developed freestyle scenes; for example, Japan regularly has three contests a year, while Australia has yet to hold one. Without this adjustment, Yuzuki Kawasaki would always place first, and Josh Dunstone stands no chance of ever advancing up the tables.
Adjustment six: World Championships have to be respected, and while no ranking system is ever going to replace the idea of a World Champion (currently Germany’s Daniel Adam at the time of writing), there has to be some added weight given to reflect the prestige of a World Championship. Adding bonus points to a World Championship would break the system very quickly (and they generally have high enough attendance to be worth a lot of points anyway), so instead, placement in the year’s World Championships will be used as a tie-breaker. It might not make a difference… or it might be what separates the top two positions. Either way, for those who care about “rankings”, attending the World Championship still has weight in this system.
Adjustment seven: in the event of a tie that cannot be decided by World Championship placements, the number of events attended will be used as a tie-break. Again, this is to encourage engagement and interaction; the argument is that someone who only attended one big event has not put in as much work or time as someone who has attended three smaller events, so that has to be considered.
Finally, all ranking tables reset when the calendar changes at the end of the year. We considered a “rolling” system, where results from one event replace the results from that event in the previous year, but as the contest calendar is rarely that consistent, a yearly reset – making the table work like a football season – seemed like the fairest and most sane option. Tables will be compiled at suitable intervals mid-year so those interested can check their progress, but the final results will be posted on this website at the start of the following year to give us time to collate and check all the relevant data.
Now I’d like to say a few things regarding this as me, Tony Gale, instead of as “the WFSA”. I am aware that there are definitely going to be people reading this who don’t see the point in a “ranking system”, and to those people, I say this: in all honesty, I get it. In a world where everything is gamified and ranked, bringing a global ranking system into play can make something that is supposed to be fun into something much more serious – and, dare I say, “organised”. And, ultimately, what does it matter? If you end the year in the top three, what are you going to get other than a pat on the back and a warm sense of pride? Shouldn’t we all just be skateboarding and having fun?
However, consider the following: if you are organising a contest at any scale, it is much easier to raise funds and the permission to use a space or location if you can show it is part of a bigger structure. No one is going to take five friends trying to hold a get-together seriously, but if you can say “this will follow the guidelines laid out by the WFSA and give the competitors points towards a global ranking system” – even if you’re still just five people trying to hold a basic get-together! – local councils and governments will respond well to this. I used to work for a local council’s Youth Engagement Through Sports scheme many years ago; this is exactly the sort of thing they look for, and can make the difference between obtaining permission/clearance and funding or having something rejected. And if you’ve ever been to a contest, or a workshop, or a flatcamp, or any other event for freestyle skateboarding and had a good time, it’s in your best interest to support initiatives that make holding more of those events easier.
There’s also the knock-on effects for the riders: it is much, much easier to obtain funding and support for travel if you can show the events you take part in are involved in a wider framework. Some countries respond better to this than others; the UK, for instance, has historically been notoriously poor at supporting “athletes” in smaller sports, but Romania has been very supportive of its up-and-coming freestyle skateboarding talent. It is my hope – and that of the WFSA overall – that structures such as this ranking system will help more skaters from more countries get the sort of support and recognition that Marius Constantin and his crew have received. After all, most people are travelling to events with money taken from their own pocket, sometimes even resorting to what is quintessentially gambling to justify the trip (I can’t really afford this, but if I do well enough, I can earn money from the prize purse to pay for it…). This isn’t sustainable, and too many talented freestylers have effectively left the scene over the years because of this.
Despite this, I understand there’s going to be some scepticism, especially in the early days. However, this has had a whole bunch of eyes on it at this point, and we’ve now run four full years worth of data through this system (2018, 2022, 2023, and 2024), looked at every possible exploit and edge case, and I’m confident that what we’ve ended up with scales well and reflects the talents, ability, and engagement of freestylers worldwide in a fair and structured way.
I think these are exciting times for freestyle, and there’s a lot of good projects and ideas underway; I’m genuinely excited to see what 2025 brings – and who climbs to the top of the ranking table by the end of the year!
Good job. I hope everyone will take the time to read this completely and really think on it.