LOOKING TO GAIN EXPOSURE
Skateboarding has found its niche, but surfing, sport climbing and karate hope to rock crowds at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games
Sponsored by Vans. Living in a van. In Vancouver.
Adam Hopkins smiles at the symmetry in the life he has chosen.
Hopkins is a 29-year-old professional skateboarder, born in Thunder Bay, Ont., and raised as the best of his ilk usually are, in parks and bowls, on parking lots and sidewalks all over the map. His sponsorship deal with the apparel company Vans helps pay the freight as he travels the world on a board.
He is also a bartender who could no longer reconcile 70-hour work weeks with the constant emptying of his bank account on outrageous left coast rent. In the fall of 2017 he bought a 1991 GMC Safari van, kitted it out as a camper, drove it to Mexico for four months on a trial run in 2018 and is living in it outside a friend’s house, while making occasional use of the great indoors for a nominal fee.
“I look at it like a game and
I’m not playing by those rules right now. Most of my friends are paying $900 or $1,500 a month. I’m trying to skate, I have this path I’m pursuing, these are the opportunities I’ve been given, and it’s how do I cut costs to the lowest level so I can put the money I’m bringing in toward my craft? If I had to pay rent right now, I probably wouldn’t be able to go to the Olympics.”
In seven months, Hopkins should be in Tokyo, riding an eclectic wave of additions to the Summer Games program that includes surfing, karate and sport climbing.
While sprinters, rowers, swimmers and gymnasts will tell tales of their lifelong Olympic dreams en route to Tokyo, no such story thread exists for surfers, skateboarders and climbers.
“That was never the narrative as a kid because we’ve always been the misfits,” said 26-yearold skateboarder Matt Berger, who was born in Kamloops. “We never thought it would get to that point, where people would ever be interested. We’re too wild, too this, too that. People love skateboarding because it’s this creative community and if we think it’s cool and we want to do it, we go do it, and we don’t care. We don’t need approval from anyone.”
When his sport was approved for admission in the Olympic family, now 33-year-old skateboarder Ryan Decenzo of Vancouver had news for his family.
“It seemed like it was a rumour at first, and then it was, like, ‘oh, no, it’s real. And it’s coming up in two years? That’s going to be before we know it.’ I was, like, ‘Mom, I might be able to go to the Olympics,’ and she was, like, ‘What? OK, maybe I won’t tell you to quit. You can quit next year.’”
At the heart of the program expansion is an admission from the International Olympic Committee that generations of consumers and the sponsors who target them won’t be reached or indeed exploited through exposure to traditional offerings like modern pentathlon, for instance. There are perhaps hundreds of millions of people on the planet who would surely be surprised that the century-old sport involves shooting and a horse, and pleased that no competitors are actually allowed to shoot a horse. Though modern pentathlon is a textbook oxymoron, the designation delineates the sport from its classic predecessor, which combined long jump, javelin, discus, running and wrestling.
Skateboarding, on the other hand, emerged as a cool California pursuit in the 1950s and is seen as surfing’s land-based first cousin. Fair, then, that they should join hands in a bitchin’ Olympic debut, dude. You see, when the breeze died and the Pacific Ocean flattened out, bored surfers took to the pavement and sidewalks in beach communities like Venice, Manhattan, Hermosa, Laguna and
Huntington, having first attached roller skate wheels to their miniature boards.
In Olympic surfing, 20 men and 20 women will compete for one set of medals apiece over two days. Bethany Zelasko, a 19-yearold who hopes to compete in Tokyo for Canada, said it’s a rare opportunity for her sport to gain some exposure.
“I’m very honoured to be a part of that. I’d just really love a spot to compete. I think it will be really good for surfing, too. I think a lot of surfers have a misconception that what we do is on the world stage, and technically it is, for surfing, but it is not THE world stage. And the Olympics is. It would be exciting to show the world my sport.”
The exposure should be good for skateboarding, too, as 40 men and 40 women will compete in park and street medal events. In the street competition, skaters will use stairs, handrails, curbs, benches and slopes to perform tricks for judges. The park competition will be held in a bowl, and skaters will be judged on the strength of the tricks they land in the best of three runs, each lasting 40 to 60 seconds.
Berger, a street specialist, now lives in Huntington Beach, 10 minutes from the water. He couch-surfed for a year and got down to his last $300 before winning his way into Street League, the global tour that launched his pro career. The sport has since taken him to Brazil, Germany, Norway, Finland, South Africa and Ethiopia, all over Canada and the U.S.
“And it’s not just doing tricks on a board. So much plays into it. You travel to different countries, you’re with your friends, you’re experiencing the cultures of new communities on your board. I’ve done filming trips to China where we’re on our boards, skating through the city to the subway, then from the subway to the spot we’re going to, then to the restaurant where we’re having dinner.”
He calls the enjoyment endless, the path he has taken inevitable since he discovered the sport at age six.
“I didn’t have a choice. There was no way I was going to move on and deviate, that’s because of how passionately obsessive I’ve been with skateboarding since Day One. That’s my thing. I feel it’s a gift because I know so many people who have never even discovered that in their lives. And to have that passion now become like a full-time job, where I live and travel, I’m super grateful. It’s insane.”
It is also inevitable that the mechanics of admission into the Olympics’ five-ring circus will force changes upon all sports. The hope is they are mostly beneficial, the fear that they will be too invasive.
Sport climber Sean Mccoll, a 32-year-old from North Vancouver who is president of the athletes’ commission, made presentations to the IOC before his sport’s inclusion. He’s happy with the result as 20 male and 20 female climbers will compete in the disciplines of speed, bouldering and lead climbing, with two sets of combined medals up for grabs.
In speed climbing, two competitors go head-to-head, trying to find the fastest route up a 15-metre wall. In bouldering, competitors attempt as many fixed routes as they can in a given time frame, and in lead climbing, competitors are judged on the height they attain.
“Everyone wanted to go to the Olympics but people were afraid that the Olympics would change our sport,” he said. “That’s what we worked on. How do we highlight all three disciplines of our sport and at the same time join the Olympics, this movement we have all wanted to join? So the combined was by far the best idea, and then in Paris for 2024 it’s proposed we have two medals, so we would split out speed climbing right away.”
The combined event would then include only bouldering and lead climbing, which also makes sense, since they are closely aligned.
Canadian skateboarders also seem satisfied their sport will retain its distinct pair of identities, as Berger explained.
“It depends on which part of the community you’re talking about,” he begins, “but I don’t see it being damaging because the culture-movers, the people who have built skateboarding to the present day, those brands and those individuals, that community is alive and well.
“It’s not like the Olympic media has washed out the home of skateboarding and taken over. I’m on the inside, and I see these people from other countries who would never otherwise have the opportunity to travel, are now travelling with their team. So I’m seeing a very positive side to it as well.”
Hopkins said he has found a way to compete while still living inside his sport’s adventuresome core.
“Right now this is way more of a rigid path but it’s like my heart is still on the highway in a way. What drew me to skateboarding as a kid was the adventure side of it. … So when I go to Rio, I do the whole contest and then I stay a few days. I find the oldest, crustiest park from the 1970s. That’s my way of feeding my sense of adventure while going through a more rigid process, because I do enjoy balance.”
There was no way I was going to move on and deviate, that’s because of how passionately obsessive I’ve been with skateboarding since Day One