SKATERS WILL HAVE TO ‘CLEAN UP THEIR ACTS’ FOR OLYMPICS
Sanchez star Dainton claims cannabis use is widespread in skateboarding
S KATEBOARDERS will have to “clean up their acts” if they want to pass Olympic drug tests, Dirty Sanchez star Lee Dainton has claimed.
The 43-year-old claims drug use, especially cannabis, is widespread in skating.
“There are going to be a lot of people who will have to clean up their acts,” Dainton said. “A lot of them partake in smoking marijuana.
“The thing is, if you smoke weed and you drink, that is not like taking steroids. They are of no interest to skateboarders. They would not be performance enhancing.”
Cannabis is popular “just because it relaxes them”, he said.
“It just loosens them up, I don’t know whether you would see that as an advantage,” Dainton, who runs Cwmbran’s 420 skate shop, said.
“But then Usain Bolt has participated in it too.”
The nine-times Olympic gold medallist has spoken about smoking weed as a youngster.
Speaking at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Bolt said: “When you’re a child in Jamaica, you learn how to roll a joint. Everyone tried marijuana, including me, but I was really young.”
Dainton said: “A huge amount of skateboarders smoke it. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with that, whether they will relax the rule for skateboarders.”
Fellow Dirty Sanchez star Matt Pritchard – once dubbed by late Stereophonics drummer Stuart Cable as “a real party animal” – insisted he did not condone drugs.
“If they are smoking drugs then they are stupid,” the 43-year-old, a former pro-skateboarder, said. “If they want to be in the Olympics and are smoking weed then they are asking for trouble.
“If you’re going to do it then do it properly.
“If you’re smoking marijuana in the Olympics then it is not a good example for the younger generation either.”
Former editor of America’s Transworld Skateboarding magazine, Skin Phillips, is one of the most powerful men in the business.
The Swansea-born photographer manages Adidas’ skateboard team.
“It would not be rocket science to find out who is smoking,” he said.
“Imagine if they got caught and chucked out of the Olympics? They would put it on their resume!”
Pritchard and Dainton both ruled themselves out of the 2020 games, to be held in Tokyo.
“My body would fall to bits if I tried skateboarding nowadays,” Pritchard said.
They also both questioned whether skateboarding was even a sport.
Dainton thought it was “closer to an art”.
All three had mixed views about whether it should be in the Olympics.
Pritchard, from Cardiff, said he was worried the International Olympic Committee was “not going to have a clue about skateboarding”.
Dainton said skateboarding in the Olympics “does not make sense in my head”, while Phillips thought “a lot of people are going to go for it”.