In 2004 ESPN removed Inline Street from the X games, Then in 2005 they removed Inline Vert which removed Inline from the X games entirely.  The reason behind this was due to negative propaganda started by the skateboard industry who were trying to denounce inline as a joke and lure athletes away from Blades to Skateboarding to sell more products which at the time, the amount of in-liners tripled that of skateboarders. This notion is broken down into much more detail in the documentary "Barely Dead" (Which could be found on youtube). 

     However in the recent years many former inline skaters have return to the sport, either through nostalgic means, parenting reasons, or just because the culture of hate that surrounded the sport is no longer socially acceptable. Getting back into aggressive skating saved my life, I was in a deep depression and contemplating suicide before I strapped my Blades back on. It was the best decision of my life.  In-line skating is an art form just like Skateboarding and BMX. It allows us to express ourselves through our motions and style. 

    The fact that the athletes who are the greatest Inline Skaters in the world can't make a living off of our sport is a tragedy. It doesn't have to be this way. We can show them how much we appreciate the lengths they go to to make our jaws drop with their amazing airs or a technical grinds or even their tutorials on how to skate. I just want to give back to Aggressive skating what Aggressive skating gave back to me. Life. 

     The in-line culture has had a resurgence in the past few years, In-liners in our communities have been extremely supportive of one another. It's a beautiful thing to witness.  The culture of "Aggressive Inline" has flourished into a positive new lifestyle for many adults who only want the chance to pass it down to their children. The shame of this whole thing is because people forget how many years people like me had to avoid doing what they loved to avoid getting made fun of or beat up. It's unfortunate that ESPN and the X games let something like this happen in the first place. but they don't have to leave this apart of their legacy they can fix this by giving the sport another chance. It is time that Disney/ESPN overcome the bullying that pushed out in-line from the X games in the first place, and help restore the honor the sport once had. Disney owns ESPN and they created the movie "Brink" which was a movie about Aggressive Inline Skating. So if Disney wanted to, they could bring back the "Soul Skater" mentality they preach about in their own movie, and give the sport the attention it deserves. Heck if Disney liked Aggressive inline enough to make a movie about it, then why can't they help us return our sport to glory. James Pitaro I beg of you to let my sport show you how amazing it is. and to prove to you that there is a market for it. Aggressive Skaters hold their own competitions now. We love the sport soo much that we hold our own competitions. and lots of people come to watch them. The only problem with that is that we limit our ability to improve our sports ceiling if we are the one constantly spending time on hosting these competitions. There needs to be a higher calling. The X Games. and maybe one day the olympics. 

      Aggressive In-line helped make the X-games what it is today. When the X-games needed Aggressive in-line, Rollerbladers answered the call. Now in-line could use the support of the x-games to help return our best athletes to glory again. I would put our athletes against any other action sports athlete around. They go just as high and just a fast as any other action sport around.  Inline is still currently in the X games over seas in countries like China. So you can see there is still a market for it, but it got its start here in America. So it deserves to come back to the American X- Games. Please sign the Petition and help me help my sport.

Reach out to James Pitaro who's the head of ESPN and Say "WE WANT OUR AGGRESSIVE INLINE BACK!" 

Thank you!