Wheels on fire: meet the midlife skateboarders on a roll

Skateboarding may have a new profile as an Olympic sport, says Tom Ough, but older devotees are rediscovering the joys of baggy clothes and loud music

More than 70 years since bored Californian surfers first attached roller skate wheels to planks of wood, skateboarding has become an Olympic sport. The Tokyo Games will feature two disciplines, street and park, with Sky Brown, a brilliant 13-year-old, set to become Britain’s youngest summer Olympian and a trailblazer for female skaters.

It is a watershed moment for a sport that, for much of its history, has been looked down on, pigeonholed as a pastime for teens in baggy jeans. Skate parks still attract teens, but there’s an older contingent too; the forty- and fiftysomethings who fell in love with skating when it became popular in the UK in the 80s. Different skaters describe different relationships with their sport, but veterans speak fondly of the culture surrounding the action, whether it be the music, the fashion or the lifestyle.

Skateboarding GB, the organisation that oversees the sport in Britain, says there are now 750,000 skateboarders in the UK, at least 10 per cent of whom have taken up the sport recently. About 85 per cent of British skaters are male, but female skateboarding has grown by a remarkable 24 per cent in the past 12 months, a jump that Skateboarding GB attributes to a number of factors, including the growth of female-only sessions at skate parks; the inspirational effect of high-profile skaters such as Brown and her Team GB colleague Bombette Martin, 14; the growth of regional female skateboarding groups, and the inclusive atmosphere of the sport.

Rick Bailey, a 44-year-old PE teacher at Armfield Academy in Blackpool, reports a surge of interest from his students. “I’ve recently started an afterschool skateboarding club, and it’s now the most popular club here, outstripping football with over 30 participants.”

Perhaps one day those 30 children will be veteran skaters themselves. We spoke to three of the current veteran generation about the joys and challenges of being long-term skateboarders: the thrills, the spills, the tricks, the injury risks and the camaraderie.

Chris and Sue Allen on their garden skateboarding ramp in Torquay