Interview: Mathias Silhan and the NL Contest - 08/05/10

Could you please tell our readers who you are and what the NL Contest is?

I'm Mathias Silhan from France, and I'm skating since about 13 years. We created Nouvelle Ligne with all the old skaters from Strasbourg. It's a Rollerblading Association we created to promote our sport, and organize events around it. The NL Contest is our main event and it takes place in Strasbourg France on May 10 and 11th. The NLcontest means at the beginning the Nouvelle Ligne contest, for the nameo f our association, but you can find many others derivated meanings...Every year, the NL contest is attracting more and more skaters and public, it brings also people outside from skating, and different medias, so it's making a good promotion of our sport.



Besides you who is also working on this contest?

All the skaters from Strasbourg involved in the association. On the real organisation, I'm working with few persons Julien Lafarge, Joseph Pasquier, Nicolas Mougin... but on the NL Contest, we have around 30persons voluntaries who are working with us.

Why are you not doing a contest for rollerbladers only?

We try to organize a real festival. As we are the only association of 'extremsport' in Strasbourg, we are the only interlocutor with the city, and they gave us the whole budget (city subventions) dedicated to the skatepark in Strasbourg, so we have to involve all the persons who are using the skatepark: inline skating, skateboarding and bmx.

All those sports mixed in one event brings more peoples, and as we are exclusively rollerbladers in Nouvelle Ligne, we profit of this event to put rollerblading at the top of the event.



What other sports are present at NL and how is working with people from different sports?

As I said we have also skateboarding and bmx. The organization is simple, we just bring judges for them and they have their contest, minirampe and flat for skateboard and street for bmx. Work with skateboarders or bikers here is easy because every body knows everybody, and the ambiance is cool between all of us.



You are a professional rollerblader. So you have already skated in a lot of contests. What are the most common mistakes you guys are trying to avoid?

I don't know really. There's many mistakes, and we try to improve year after year... For us the important thing is that all the people who are coming have a nice time here and appreciate the event. I think one of the important thing is the planning, so skaters can profit of the day and the others aspects of the event. We tried this year to make the planning the best for rollerbladers, so they can organize their self good between the contest and the party's!! We will also have a brandvillage with our partners, and many specials activities and surprises in it...

How many people do you expect?

I don't know really how many exactly. The last year on the two days we had around 5000 persons, if we count all the people who came on the event during 2 days! About rollerblading, we expect for sure the french scene and others skaters from close countries... As we are almost in the middle of Europe, it's a strategique place to attract skaters from different countries... We could also invite some skaters like RicardoLino, Albert Hooi, Samo Bajec, Bruno Lowe, Kevin Maron Lopez with a subvention we get from the European Parlment to invite skaters from different 'European Union' countries... Also our partners like The Conference, Grindhouse, InlineMarket, Nice Skates are sending some of their skaters, so the event should have an international dimension and get more interesting!!



Will NL be televised?

Yes,this year we are working with some regional and local televisions,radios and newspapers... After the two first editions, the event get more recognized because he was almost the only one in this part of France, and probably the most important, so we get contacted by the medias who wanted to focused on our event like a good show case of 'extreme sports'.

Will the prize money be distributed equally between the athletes of all sports?

We have 3000€ for all the discipline (street pro, vert pro, skateboard and bmx).



We give 2000€ for rollerblading and 1000€ for all the rest.

We have to give a small prize money to the others disciplines also because we are getting money from the city, so we have to reward everybody. Otherwise they will not give us as much money.

What is the biggest challenge when you are organizing such a huge contest?

I think the biggest challenge was to find all the partners, to make the event happen. It's very hard those times to find a real partner who can give you enough money to organise a such event... so looking for partners was one of the hardest challenges.

Whenyou get their support, the new challenge is the promotion. We want tomake discover our event to as many people as possible, and for that we have to make people know the event, and I think it's a really huge work. The last and most important challenge is to make all the people who come happy! For that, we are preparing this event since more than 8 months to make it very special... So you should pack your back pack and come the soonest, because you have only 5 days left to make the way;)!

See you there!