SA skateboarder on a roll
With his gravity-defying moves, local skateboarder Jean-Marc Johannes is making the world take note
AGUINNESS world record, the first South African to win gold at an international skateboard competition and a picture featured in the National Museum of Sports in France. Jean-Marc Johannes (27) is at the top of his game but that won’t stop the skateboarding champ from aiming even higher.
“Even if I’m No 1, I’ll fight as if I’m No 2,” Jean-Marc says.
The athlete from Athlone in Cape Town is the only South African skateboarder to have stepped on an international podium after winning a silver medal at the FISE World Series in China last year.
He first entered the competition in 2015 and despite clinching first place in the Amateur (Am) Series, he decided to compete in the Am division once more.
“I wanted to prove to myself I was worth going professional. I didn’t want to turn pro simply because I was told I could do it,” he explains.
Jean-Marc says he doesn’t skate to impress those around him but to prove his capabilities to himself.
As a child he was expected to excel in sports. “My father was a soccer player, my granddad did boxing and my mother was a skateboarder.”
At age 10 Jean-Marc got onto his mom’s old skateboard and a year later he won his first competition, marking the start of his competitive career.
IT WASN’T all smooth sailing, says the record-breaker who perfected his skill in his teens. “I’d go to school with my skateboard and that wasn’t exactly the coolest thing to have. I was bullied.” He persevered through the peer pressure and at 18 Jean-Marc placed sixth out of 300 skaters at his first international competition.
In 2013 the adrenaline junkie took on a risky challenge: a skateboard jump between two containers, both three storeys high, with a distance of about 2m between them.
“The guys from Fear Factor came out to help with the safety precautions and equipment,” he recalls, but Jean-Marc politely declined. He was going to take a literal leap of faith without any safety measures.
He stunned everyone when he succeeded and earned a spot in France’s National Museum of Sport where a photo of the jaw-dropping stunt is displayed.
But that wasn’t enough for the modest over-achiever.
Last year Jean-Marc broke the Guinness world record for the most Nollie flips (a trick where the rider performs a kickflip off the nose of the skateboard) in one minute.
The previous record was eight flips in 60 seconds, but he managed a whopping 14 in 46 seconds.
His love for the action sport stretches further than simply winning medals and breaking records, though. Fill the Gap, a charity he started with his girlfriend, Roxanne Morris (27), donates unwanted skateboards, helmets and knee and elbow pads to children who can’t afford them.
“We called it Fill the Gap because our aim is to fill the gap between kids who want to skateboard and whatever is prohibiting them from fulfilling that desire.”