Skateboarding’s rebellious streak remains intact even at the Olympics

PARIS – As a teenager, I was obsessed with skateboarding after picking it up in the noughties. Aptly, the sport has a “naughty” edge to it and I would spend hours at skateparks and when it got dark, my friends and I would roam the streets in the Central Business District and Orchard Road.

We skated on marble ledges and stairs till first light and the first bus, evading security guards and policemen trying to stop us from what was considered as damaging public property.

Seeing the sport at the Paris Olympics, in temporary urban parks built in the middle of the Place de la Concorde – which is also home to the grand Luxor Obelisk and Fontaines de la Concorde – has been jarring for me, and it must be too for skateboarders, both professional and recreational.

On any regular day, seeing skateboarders in these historic sites would probably spark angry calls to the police.

Instead, spectators at the Place de la Concorde are treated to the sight of top-class skateboarders from countries such as the United States, Japan and Australia executing ollies, flips and grinding down rails against the backdrop of what looks like a French museum.

Mind-blowing it may be, though at the same time fitting, a homage of sorts to skateboarding’s rebellious streak. It is also why some skaters are still divided over the sport’s inclusion in the Olympics.

Unlike traditional competitive sports, skateboarding is a freewheeling one with no rules to define what is a good way to ride a board. There is no “faster, higher, stronger” – you can even do a handstand on a board and it can be counted as a trick.

Unlike runners who are judged by their speed, or football strikers by their ability to put the ball into the back of a net, the goals of skateboarding are subjective. For some, it is learning new tricks and for others, being able to move on a skateboard is a gold medal achievement.

After its inclusion at Tokyo 2020, purists felt that skateboarding had sold out. The argument was that the sport encourages individualism and creativity, and that legitimising it as an Olympic sport would make athletes learn high scoring tricks just to win medals.

Some friends of mine believed that the Olympics needed skateboarding more than it needed the Olympics, as its cool factor could draw a younger audience.

Others were more accepting, believing it would pave the way for more skateparks to be built and that public street skating would become more accepted.

I was once part of the former, thinking that the sport would lose its essence as a subculture, but as I saw Japanese prodigy Yuto Horigome win his second straight gold medal at La Concorde on July 29, I also remembered his life outside the Olympic bubble, a prolific skater based in Los Angeles whose entire days are spent prowling the streets to film creative lines for his next video.

After the celebratory bubbly, he will be back to the grind, chased out of street spots by security officers and creating innovative tricks, all while being a two-time Olympic champion.

Sports jock, innovator or rebel, that’s the beauty of skateboarding that I love – you can be whoever you want to be.