This past weekend at Pole Art Worlds in Italy we had a performer complete her competition piece in “BlackFace”, in tribute to Whoopi Goldberg. We would like to issue a heartfelt apology to everyone in the pole world for this happening; we take responsibility and should have been more vigilant in our review of allowed costuming and make-up.
We do however realize that there are sometimes mistakes in judgement especially with the number of countries and athletes involved. However, we do take this seriously and we will immediately take steps to make sure something like this never happens again.
We will immediately add rules in which all athletes will be required to submit their costuming and make-up no later than 15 days prior to the competition. All athletes will be checked to ensure that they have conformed to all rules and regulations before entering the stage area. Athletes who do not conform to these rules will not be allowed to compete.
We are revising our approval process so that more committee members and federations are involved to ensure this type of situation does not happen again. We will be posting all new regulations within the couple of weeks.
We would like to thank all of you who have reached out to us and shared your feelings. This is so important for us as a community to be able to hear one another and learn from one another. Like Pole Sports we are always evolving and we are trying to better our sport and organization. We cannot do that without the community.
The athlete involved has experienced a tremendous amount of online hatred and bulling and that is also not acceptable. We would ask that all of us involved can voice our opinions and feeling but please be respectful of one another. We welcome your thoughts and concerns.
Thank you for your time and patience.