We here at Alli, the Alliance of Action Sports, are proud to announce Gatorade as the title sponsor of the Free Flow Tour. Gatorade will support the summer Free Flow Tour series as well as the soon-to-be launched amateur snowboard and freeski tour events.

In the coming months, Alli and Gatorade will work closely with local skateboard/BMX shops and parks to supe up approximately 50 Free Flow Tour sites across the country. Gatorade will also establish a legacy program at each skate and BMX park to commemorate local rippers. Did we mention each Free Flow Tour stop is an open to the public qualifier where you and your li'l cousin Joey are welcome to enter?

In addition to setting up the grassroots program and tour-wide entitlement and category rights, Gatorade and Alli have partnered with FUEL TV to create exclusive Gatorade Free Flow Tour content. That's right; Alli and Gatorade will create three original half-hour programs dedicated to summer and winter Free Flow Tour events, which FUEL TV will host and promote across their network and online platform.

"The Free Flow Tour is as important as anything we are doing at Alli," said Wade Martin, Alli CEO. We're "providing amateur athletes an ascension path to the pros, and identifying the rising stars of action sports." Martin said Gatorade is the ideal partner to help grow action sports and to elevate the Gatorade Free Flow Tour to its highest potential.

Jeff Urban, Gatorade's senior vice president of sports marketing said his company wants to support action sports at grassroots and amateur levels. "The Free Flow Tour is an amazing platform for talented young riders to use as a launching pad to the next level." Gatorade has recently signed three action sports athletes: skateboarder Chaz Ortiz, snowboarder Ellery Hollingsworth, and BMX rider Nigel Sylvester.

Now a pro rider for Zoo York, Chaz said his "pro skating career got a jump-start by the Free Flow Tour." The now-14-year-old flow master was the 2007 Free Flow Tour Skate Park champion and winner of the 2008 Skate Park Dew Cup. "It's great Gatorade is joining the Free Flow Tour to support the growth of action sports," he said. They're helping to provide "kids with a path to achieve their dreams of becoming a pro athlete."

The Gatorade Free Flow Tour website joins the Allisports.com hub, which also houses those of the Dew Tour, Winter Dew Tour, King of Wake, AMA Motocross and the Maloof Money Cup. The Free Flow Tour-end of Allisports.com will include up-to-date information on tour events, previous results, original programming and highlights from both summer and winter events.

In 2008, the Free Flow Tour featured 50 regional events which took place in 26 cities across the US. The competitions break down to 24 in Skate Park, 16 in BMX Park, six in Skate Vert and four in BMX Vert. The skate contests are open to skaters 18-and-under and the BMX contests are open to riders 21-and-under. The winner from each of these regional contests receives an all-expense paid trip to the Dew Tour Toyota Challenge in Salt Lake City, Utah, to compete in the Free Flow Final. The winner of the Free Flow Final earns a wildcard spot to compete against the pros at the final stop of the Dew Tour, the PlayStation Pro in Orlando, Florida.

Previous Free Flow Tour winners include reigning Skate Park Dew Cup champion Ortiz, Florida's Timmy Knuth (who placed fourth at the 2008 Skate Park Final), and pro BMX Park rider Mike Spinner, who finished last year with a second-overall ranking.

Check back soon to see if the Gatorade Free Flow Tour will land at your local park.