Eight-time World Cup skateboarding champion Andy Macdonald will make his Olympic debut as the oldest skateboarder in the competition. Fifty years old, he will represent Great Britain along with two teenagers: Tokyo Olympic bronze medallist Sky Brown, 15, and world champion Lola Tambling, 16.
Recalling skateboarding was not an Olympic event when he took up the sport, Macdonald said, “But here I am, qualifying at the age of 50, and it feels pretty surreal. Age really is just a number.”
California-based American-born Macdonald can represent Britain because he has a British father.
He was inspired to try for the Olympics after watching skateboarding’s Olympic debut in the 2020 Tokyo Games. He found a berth on the British team through a qualifier in Budapest, Hungary.
Record haul of X Games medals for vert skateboarding
Macdonald, who became a professional skateboarder in 1994, holds the record for the most X Games medals in vert skateboarding.
However, his mastery of the vert ramp will not give him an edge in the Olympics, where he will compete in park, a faster-moving discipline using a three-dimensional bowl.
“A vert ramp is 14 feet high and the deepest bowls in park skating in the Olympic Park series are nine feet high. So it’s like taking everything I know from vert skating and trying to apply it to like, a much smaller, quicker, genre and that is like learning to do it all over again,” he said.
“I always knew it was going to be a long shot,” he said. I’m 50 years old skating against 14-year-olds, so I knew it was going to be hard.”
But older folks cheered him on when he announced on social media he would compete in the Olympics.
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Representing the old guys
“When I announced, ‘Hey, I qualified,’ the 50+ crew was just like, ‘Yeah, representative for the old guys, go get ’em. Until the wheels fall off’,” he said with a grin. “And that’s great. If I can motivate people to stay out there doing what they love to do into their 50s and 60s … we’re still learning how long we can ride a skateboard for, and who’s to say? I’ve had a skateboarding career that’s lasted decades longer than I ever thought it would. And making it to the Olympic Games, getting to take my wife and kids to Paris, is just awesome.”
He has two daughters, aged 8 and 14, and an 18-year-old son. A typical day for him includes taking his children, helping them with their homework and after-school activities, as well as skateboarding practice for the Olympics. “From the get-go, it was always like, ‘Can you do this? Can you be an Olympic athlete and still be the dad, the important stuff?’ The most important thing’s raising my kids,” he said. “I’ve been able to do both. For me that’s the biggest accomplishment.”