It seems after falling off the radar over here some invites were sent out to a few countries outside Asia and low and behold some of those teams showed up for what was purportedly an event serving, in part, as a demonstration sport to the World Games in Taiwan recently. (Think of the World Games as the Olympics ugly step-sister.)
The first time around I tried to get excited but the more I looked the less I saw. To this day I can't find anything about paintball or demonstration sports etc. on the official World Games website and without contacts from friends of VFTD around the world I doubt anyone over here would have ever heard about it--until after the fact. All of which makes it hard for me to take any of it overly seriously. Maybe that makes me the Ugly American but even the peeps running the show apparently couldn't be bothered to try and promote it so what else am I supposed to think?
Anyway, last week the kids at pbhub in Germany reported a German team was gonna represent and as it turned out they won. And one of the hub kids (guessing here) --UPDATE: Florian of PBHub and Instinct would like y'all to know he isn't a kid--posted the good news with some photos over at the Nation. He also reported that the Ironmen and Damage were invited to rep the U.S. --UPDATE: that's now been edited--which I imagine somebody told somebody but at least in the case of Damage it isn't correct. Beyond that I remain skeptical but otherwise maybe the World Games is where we belong.
On the plus side, who knows, in four years paintball might be up to speed and a match for the Frisbee which already has an international sanctioning body; the World Flying Disc Federation. The truth is out there.
UPDATE: Here's the link to the original post and comments on this World Games "demonstration sport" gimmick. If you are interested in knowing a little more check it out.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
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7 comments:
Hi Baca, the german team that won were basically Ramstein Instinct, a CPL team in the Millennium Series.
I actually did see a comercial for the world games. It was a guy doing some gymnastics or something i think. I would have blown it off completly if i didn't read about it here but it wasn't very interesting or attention grabbing.
Thanks, Caranthir.
I hadn't even thought of that angle, Pelc, and I've no idea if any of the actual World Games were telecast in the U.S. I was mostly focused on this whole demonstration sport claim. I would be interested to see a WG's official actually address the issue (and validate the claim.) Or perhaps somebody who received an invite can say who it came from specifically.
The "kid" wrote you a PM on pBnation. :)
It was actually called APIT - the 2nd Asian Paintball Invitational Tournament held with the support of the organizing committee of the World Games - which meant that the APIT organisers got to use the World Games logos and branding at the event.
1st RAMSTEIN INSTINCT (Germany)
2nd SYDNEY SWAT (Australia)
3rd TEAM DATIS (Iran)
I just want to know who's going to win the World Games tug of war indoor and outdoor comp. because you know we all grew up dreaming that one day we'd lead out country to victory tugging on a big fat rope!!!
Thanks, Houdini
Any idea if this was more of a courtesy to the locals, represents a real opportunity to acquire WG's sanction to compete in the future or was actually a form of drumming up more local interest in the World Games by creating ties with local sports groups.
No pressure, btw.
lol - as I said in prior comments I'm not really sure. The Taiwan paintball guys held APIT the year before so it has been a plan to tie in with the World Games for some time. The fact that Dye have their factory there as well helped motivate organisers I'm sure. Seeing that Paintball doesn't meet the entry requirements to be even considered as a demo sport at the WG I don't think there was ever any intention of trying to get it included on a permanent basis - it was simply an opportunity for paintballers in the region to get together, eat lots of food and play some paintball.
As for how the invite list was decided I think it was a who you know (or who Dye know) sort of thing with teams coming from Div 3 to Div 1 competing against each other. But I may be wrong. Considering a team represented Singapore and here in Singapore we can't even own our own paintball markers I suppose any association with an event considered credible is better than nothing at all.
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