There is nothing like climbing on to a skateboard at the age of 60 to start you thinking about the unforgiving hardness of concrete. It’s my first proper go in about 45 years, and instead of losing myself in the moment, I’m obsessing about x-ray departments and fracture clinics. But I keep going because when it works it’s incredible. And I’m not alone. It seems skateboarding is the new golf.
Jonathan Forbes, 42, founder of the North London Skate Club, is seeing more and more mature, fully grown adults discover the addictive joy to be had from sliding around on a piece of wood.
“Most that come to us are between 30 and 60, attracted partly, I think, by the group environment. We had a lot of parents standing around watching their kids and they asked if we could put something on for them too,” Forbes says.
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Older men and women are riding ramps, bowls and pavements, some rediscovering a teenage obsession, some total novices. These days the Baysixty6 skatepark in west London holds a regular “Old Man Nite”, and heading out to the Olympic Games is the 50-year-old skateboarder Andy Macdonald, who qualified last month to compete for Team GB in Paris, beating people a fraction of his age. He will be the oldest Olympian skateboarder when he competes in the men’s park event on August 7.
This is not shooting or riding, where being older makes some kind of sense: Macdonald’s event involves zipping around a concrete bowl and flying into the air. Competing alongside him for Team GB are Sky Brown and Lola Tambling, both 16. Anyone looking for a 2024 role model as they enter midlife, forget band members, actors and TV presenters and start cheering for our man on the skateboard.
No one is more incredulous than Macdonald himself. “Apparently miracles happen! I had the run of my life, the stars aligned and everything that had to happen happened. It’s been a week, I just got my kit today and I still don’t believe it,” he says.
Andy Mac, as he’s known, tells meabout his typical pre-Olympic training day: “I drop the kids off around 8am and I have this window between 9am and 1pm. The other skaters have lunch and continue practising, I leave to take my kids to piano lessons and gymnastics classes.”
But Macdonald perfectly captures the fluid physical pleasure of high-level skating. “When you’re in an aerial [a jump] there’s a point where you’re no longer going up but you haven’t started coming down, and it’s this weightless feeling and you’re flying. Skateboarders know what it feels like to fly, in that split second.”
Andrew Macdonald competing during the Olympic qualifier series on May 17 in Shanghai
FRED LEE/GETTY IMAGES
All this makes me want to skate again. There was a famously long hot summer in 1976, a 45-day rain-free period, and my east London suburb tilted slightly towards California. Skateboarding became a national craze and my primary mode of transport.
I was never very good. My primary move was going along. This isn’t specialist skate slang, I was literally satisfied with simple forward motion. Every pavement, every park pathway was an opportunity to experience that free-flowing motion. I don’t need to fly but I would love to experience the simple release to be had from going along once again.
I am realistic though. I need a brush-up first. My returner’s lesson is a special one because I’m being taught by Tommy Calvert, 14. He’s roughly the same age I was when I started and one of our top-ranked skaters. Calvert just missed qualifying for these Olympics but clearly has many more in his sights. It feels as if fate has gifted me this opportunity to meet a much better, cooler, more socially adept, version of my former self — the perfect person to help me to rediscover the skills I had back then. It feels completely appropriate to be taking lessons from a fearless teenager in this intrinsically nerve-twanging sport. I imagine I could possibly swap him some instruction about Isas or gardening.
Phil gets a lesson from the top-ranked skater Tommy Calvert, 14
CHRIS MCANDREW FOR THE TIMES
Over in the gentle beginner’s section he takes me through basic turns, where to put my feet and my weight (backwards for going up, forwards for down, feet sideways).He is infinitely patient and encouraging as I tentatively try to climb a 3ft slope: “You definitely went higher that time.” I want to show him I can move, but at the same time the proximity of the concrete to my 60-year-old bones is hard to forget. I catch glimpses of glory, a hint of how I used to feel, a microdose of how he must feel every time.
I’m wearing pads on my knees and elbows — when I was 14 my only protection would have been a pair of probably mauve corduroy trousers and a nylon T-shirt, and my greatest fear would have been the older boys stealing my board. Now the pads don’t seem nearly big enough or padded enough. I want a suit made of mattresses. Learning again after all these years is alternating between being suddenly rejuvenated and then jolted once more into midlife fragility.
Calvert has a measured, humble way of talking I associate with sports stars used to interviews and accustomed to pressure. The fact that he has just turned 14 feels irrelevant once he speaks. Calvert is still in touch with the simple pleasure of skating, despite competing at an elite level. “If you have anxiety or stress, it definitely releases all of that. I enjoy going to the park and cruising around. It’s you and the bowl, no one can tell you what to do and it’s whatever you feel like doing.” He plans to skate well into his later years.
One of the North London Skate Club’s more mature members is Graham MacMahon, 59. A skier, he found himself cut off from his sport during lockdown so returned to skateboarding and began to experiment with a board someone had lent him.
“I’d spend endless hours in Regent’s Park trying to get more and more 360 spins in one go [spinning on the two rear wheels]. I went to the Cantelowes skatepark in Camden when it reopened and I was blown away by the community. If you fall over, four people run to you to check you’re OK.”
The interest in skating triggered a physical transformation. “I realised I had no core strength. I had quite a belly on me and I spent six weeks deliberately eating two thirds of my normal portions and skating every day.” When he began an hour of skating would exhaust him, but after six weeks controlling his food intake he’d lost his belly and could train for three hours at a time.
It is a great way to exercise. My balance has noticeably improved since skating most days while writing this, and the need to be fully present (or fall off) is so relaxing.It’s a core workout as you twist and turn, along with lower-body strength as your legs cope with shifting weight and pushing the board. It’s also a cardiovascular session as your system handles the effort and adrenaline generated by varying degrees of fear.
“Calvert is still in touch with the simple pleasure of skating, despite competing at an elite level”
CHRIS MCANDREW FOR THE TIMES
Fear, it turns out, is part of the sport. “Everybody is constantly defeating little demons,” MacMahon says. “Even the absolute best guys show their appreciation when some kid is able to drop into the bowl for the first time.”
He says skaters are able to mingle regardless of age, but I can’t help an overwhelming sense of doing possibly the most old-person-inappropriate activity conceivable. There is a particularly haunting moment in the US comedy 30 Rock that has become something of an internet phenomenon. A clearly fiftysomething Steve Buscemi is an undercover cop attempting to infiltrate a high school. He walks in and utters the iconic line: “How do you do, fellow kids?” His “disguise” involves not one but two skateboards — one on his shoulder, the other under his arm.
Skating with my white beard and bald head feels like the easiest way to broadcast a later-life crisis; not a hobby but a symptom of a profound identity emergency. It’s hard not to feel everyone is eyeing you with a combination of pity and suspicion.
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Macdonald, our 50-year-old Olympic hopeful, says the UK is catching up with the US in accepting older skaters. “The UK is ten years behind America as far as public perception of skateboarding is concerned,” he says. “When I moved to San Diego, every day I would see this guy in a suit and tie on a skateboard — that’s how he got to work. It’s part of the culture there.”
It does feel like an accident of history that snow sports are prestigious activities for the older middle classes with a whole world of goggles and glühwein while skateboarding retains a teen, street character. Both are essentially about enjoying gravity effects while standing on a piece of wood.
I’m absolutely determined to continue my skateboarding. I’ve felt enough of the fluid motion already to evoke that endless Seventies’ summer rolling around the baked pavements of London. I realise I can never be 14 again but I can possibly be 60 in a more joyful and carefree way — as soon as I’ve bought some bigger pads.
