Here’s a new episode with James about Skateboarding, which will be a new event at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, along with karate, surfing, baseball/softball, sport climbing and surfing. James has been a skater for most of his life and used to write articles for a skateboarding magazine, so he’s exactly the right person to talk to about this.
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Introduction
Skateboarding might seem like an annoying antisocial hobby for children but for the first time it has been accepted by the Olympic Federation as a proper sport and is going to be one of the events at the next Olympic Games happening in Tokyo in 2020. So, skateboarding is now a mainstream sport. When the Olympics are shown on TV in a few years’ time, skateboarding might be one of the most popular events for audiences around the world, especially when you consider the popularity of snowboarding in the winter games. So, let’s find out about skating so we are ready to understand and appreciate it more.
Types of skateboarding
- Ramp (vert or miniramp)
- Street
- Freestyle
- Park
Parts of a skateboard
- The Deck – the wooden board itself, made of maple plywood and covered in grip-tape and with the nose at the front and the tail at the back)
- The Trucks (made of die-cast aluminium – they fix the wheels & axles onto the deck)
- The Wheels (made of polyurethane or ‘urethane’ and available in different hardnesses)
- The Bearings (the metal components that allow the wheels to spin on the axles)
Common tricks
- Ollie (jumping with the board under you, still touching your feet)
- Kickflip (an ollie in which you flip the board sideways under your feet by kicking it in the air)
- Shove-it (spinning the board under your feet so the nose spins round from front to back, or back to front)
- Different types of grab (doing an ollie then grabbing the board in the air)
- Grind (sliding or scraping the trucks of the board along an object like a curb or rail)
- Boardslide (sliding along an object on the underside of the board)
- Blunt (balancing on an object on the back wheels and tail)
- Nollie – doing an ollie but from the nose not the tail
- and many more! Click here for a full glossary of skateboarding.
Videos
Here is James’ selection of videos to give you an idea of the different types of skating, and some of his favourite skaters and cool moments in skateboarding. Notes written by James.
Natas Kaupas, one of the first people to develop street skating.
Mark Gonzales skating vert and street and play fighting with Oscar-winning film director, Spike Jonze. From the Real skateboards video Non Fiction. (1997)
The legend of Tom Penny, a skater from Oxford, England: Zen master, legend, space cadet, enigma.
Lizzie Armanto, one of the best female US bowl / park skaters, in an ad for Bones bearings.
Women’s Highlights – Huntington Beach | 2016 Vans Pro Skate Park Series
The Flip skateboards video “Sorry” from 2002, presented by Johnny Rotten – probably the best skate video ever made… Madness. Good soundtrack too.
James describes his skateboarding injury on the podcast in episode 180.
McVities Chocolate Digestives
Here’s that advert on the Paris metro “McVitie’s – It’s English, but it’s good!”
Click here for the full list of ingredients!