The ‘Rad Dad’ skater aiming to make it to Paris aged 50!
‘Uncle Andy’ vying with 13-year-old for Team GB skateboarding spot
THEY say you are only as old as you feel and, most of the time, 50-year-old skateboarder Andy Macdonald feels 13.
‘I’m skating with teenagers all the time,’ he tells Mail Sport. ‘On a lot of levels, I feel like I’m right there mentally. I act like a kid, I dress like a kid. It just so happens that I’m 50 years old, so when I fall it takes longer to get up and longer to heal!’
A father of three, Macdonald is what skateboarders call a ‘Rad Dad’. But this Peter Pan of the park is no figure of fun. He is a skateboarding legend in the US, who now competes for Great Britain and could be about to become the sport’s oldest Olympian.
‘When I married my wife, I told her that I would take her to Paris as often as I could,’ says Macdonald. ‘So, if I have to qualify for the Olympics to do it, then so be it!’
Macdonald has already achieved more than he expected in making it through to the Olympic Qualifier Series, in Shanghai in May and Budapest in June, where he will be one of 44 athletes battling it out for 22 places in Paris. The other Brits vying for a spot in the men’s park event are George O’Neill, aged 14, and 13-year-old Tommy Calvert — both younger than Macdonald’s oldest child.
‘They call me Uncle Andy,’ laughs Macdonald, who was born in Boston and lives in San Diego. ‘I train most days with Tommy. When we started, I was 49 and he was 12 and we were both going for the British national team. I got third and he got fourth. It’s just neat because in what other sport does that happen, where you’re competing against each other on the same level and there is such an age disparity? It’s awesome.
‘In a lot of sports, you’ve got to be 16 to go to the Olympics. If you did that in skateboarding, all of a sudden you would lose half the field. It’s fun because I can instil knowledge that has been passed down from generation to generation. They don’t know the history so much, so I’m around to fill them in.
‘They often pump me for stories from back in the day. I embellish it like, “Ah, I used to walk uphill both ways, carrying hot potatoes to keep my hands warm, just to get to the ramp in the snow”.’
Macdonald started skateboarding at the age of 12 in 1985 and turned professional in 1994. He made his name in the X Games — the sport’s premier competition — where he holds the record for the number of medals in vert, teaming up with the sport’s icon Tony Hawk to win the doubles six years running. ‘I still ride with him a couple of times a week,’ he reveals.
One of Macdonald’s many other claims to fame is that he was the first person to skateboard in the White House, introducing thenpresident Bill Clinton at an event promoting the Partnership for Drug-Free America in 1999. ‘I’ve never done drugs or alcohol,’ he says. ‘I used to travel around the schools and talk about that. The Partnership for Drug-Free America got hold of that and I was the first athlete they used for a public service announcement. It culminated in an invitation to the White House.
‘After going through security with my skateboard, there was a long marble hallway in front of me and I’m like, “Gotta skate through the White House”. The Secret Service agents weren’t nearly as excited about it as I was!’
Macdonald last competed at the X Games in 2018 before he ‘switched roles’ with his wife Rebecca, allowing her to work full-time as a teacher while he became the ‘main caretaker’ for his children, Hayden, 18, Natalie, 13, and seven-year-old Zoe.
However, after seeing some of his friends perform in Tokyo, notably Denmark’s Rune Glifberg who was then 46, he could not resist giving the Olympics a go. He was reminded he qualified for Britain through his Luton-born father Roderick, 81, and was encouraged to apply for a British passport.
‘When I called my dad about it, he was like, “Why would you want to do that?”,’ laughs Macdonald. ‘He moved over to the US with his parents just after the war, when he was like five years old. His dad was in the Royal Air Force and is from Scotland.
‘Since I became part of the British team, everyone is wanting to know my family history and I’m like, “My last name is Macdonald, it’s a clan in Scotland, I don’t know more than that”. I’ve never been to Scotland, which is terrible, but I have got big plans.’
Acquiring his British passport was the easy bit for Macdonald. With his specialist discipline of vert — which is performed on a large U-shaped ramp — not in the Olympics, he had to quickly get to grips with park, which takes place on a varied course of bowls and bends.
‘I’m known for skating half-pipes,’ he says. ‘Half-pipes are 14ft high. Now I’m going to park, the tallest things are 9ft and it’s not just back and forth. It’s like learning a new sport.
‘I’m trying to adapt my tricks. It’s the most frustrating and maddening thing on one hand, and the most challenging and fun thing on the other.’
Park is the discipline in which Sky Brown won a bronze in Tokyo, making her Team GB’s youngest Olympic medallist aged 13. She has since won gold at two X Games and last year’s World Championships. Asked if she will win in Paris, Macdonald instantly replies: ‘Yes.
‘Sky is a superstar. And she’s more of a superstar beyond skateboarding than she is within skateboarding. She’s like a unicorn. We haven’t seen anything like her as far as marketability. She can do whatever she wants.’
While Brown is all but assured her place in Paris, Macdonald has work to do to earn a spot as the 40th-ranked athlete out of the final 44.
‘It’s still a Hail Mary long shot,’ he adds. ‘But it’s possible. It’s feasible. You could argue that it was harder to make the top 44 because I started last year with 135 athletes.
‘I’m looking forward to even just doing this Olympic Qualifier Series because it’ll be the first time I’ve ever skated in a uniform. I wear a yellow helmet and that’s the extent of it. Now I’m going to be rocking British colours.
‘It wasn’t my dream to be an Olympian, but it would be a cool feather in my cap towards the end of my career to be able to say I have the most X Games medals and that I am an Olympian, too.
‘I’m just trying to enjoy it and not take it for granted. I count myself lucky that I still get to do this at 50 years old.’