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Runup to to the 2015 Kimberley Diamond Cup Skateboarding World Championships
KIMBERLEY DIAMOND CUP PRESENTED BY KUMBA IRON ORE ANNOUNCES 2015
SCHEDULEWorld Skateboarding Grand Prix today released the Kimberley Diamond Cup (KDC)
presented by Kumba Iron Ore schedule for 2015. Hosted in partnership with the
Northern Cape Provincial Government, the Kimberley Diamond Cup will feature
three Grand Slam regional qualifying events and fourteen Skateboarding for Hope
community outreach initiatives leading up to skateboarding world championships
event in Kimberley in October 2015.This year’s KDC calendar gets off to an early start with the first KDC regional
qualifying Grand Slam contest kicking off in Cape Town at Grand West on
Saturday, 28 February, as part of Ultimate X. Over the next six months, further
Grand Slam qualifiers will be held in Durban (14 June) and Johannesburg (30
August) to offer local skaters the opportunity to qualify for KDC Week.“We’re excited to host the first Grand Slam qualifying event for KDC at the
Ultimate X festival,” said WSGP CEO Tim McFerran. “As South Africa’s largest and
best known festival for action sports, it made sense for us to bring one of our
qualifying events to Ultimate X. We hope to see a very large turnout for the
contest and we’ll be looking for the best skaters from around the country to
compete in the South African Championships at Kimberley Diamond Cup this
October.”As part of the Northern Cape’s youth development mandate, the Skateboarding for
Hope programme will traverse South Africa’s largest province as well as the rest
of the country to promote skateboarding as an accessible, affordable sport.
Stops are scheduled for Gauteng, the Cape Peninsula, KwaZulu-Natal, Northern
Cape, Southern Cape and the West Coast.For a third consecutive year, Kumba Iron Ore, a business unit of Anglo American,
is back as presenting sponsor of the Kimberley Diamond Cup. According to Kumba
Chief Executive Norman Mbazima, the company proudly continues its collaboration
with the Northern Cape Province. “The Northern Cape has identified the sport of
skateboarding as an appropriate vehicle to promote the province as the ultimate
adventure and extreme sport destination, while simultaneously making a
significant contribution to youth development. As a company, we firmly believe
in providing opportunity and upliftment in the communities that are associated
with our operations and we’ve had the privilege of observing the positive impact
this programme has had on local communities,” mentions Mbazima.This year, KDC will once again play host to the Skateboarding World
Championships, drawing the best skateboarders from around the world to compete
for their share of the $500,000 prize purse, the largest in skateboarding. Last
year saw participants from 37 countries descending on the magnificent Kumba
Skate Plaza in Kimberley to compete for the coveted world champion title.According to Mr. John Block, member of the executive council for finance,
economic development and tourism in the Northern Cape, “The Kimberley Diamond
Cup has established itself as an icon event in the Northern Cape. With more than
16 000 fans attending the world championship in 2014 and being broadcasted in
173 countries the Kimberley Diamond Cup contributed to massive awareness of the
province as adventure and extreme sport destination. We are also proud of the
hundreds of new Kimberley skaters coming through the ranks at the Kumba Skate
Plaza as we continue to work hard to establish skateboarding as an affordable
sport and positive lifestyle for the youth.”Shortlink for this post: https://www.kimberley.co.za/?p=15123
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