Skateboarding

Welcome back.

Skateboarding makes its debut at the Dakar Youth Olympics and it's drawing interest from local fans and athletes alike.

Mohammed Abubakar has our story.

Skateboarding is marking its first ever Youth Olympic Games competition in Dakar.

The sport, which has rapidly grown in global popularity, is attracting attention beyond the athletes themselves.

From local fans to competitors in other disciplines, many are eager to catch the action and see amazing tricks unfold at the skate park.

Beyond the tricks, creativity and spectacle, skateboarding's debut at the Youth Olympic Games represents a significant step in bringing new generation

sports to the Olympic movement.

It was awesome.

At the time, we didn't have a very good street course at the venue, so we only had Bowl and we only had Vert.

But with that, it was certainly the beginning of something.

And I felt almost immediately the saying of if you build it, they will come kind of happen in real time.

It really is.

Everything else can be shit on there.

That golf game is getting like, all

right.

Honestly, I'm having a great week.

I feel underwater at work about everything.

I'm trying not to let it bring me down, but between Switch Sports, I saw the new You Can See Everything movie.

Loved that.

The end of A tier.

Skateboarding, leisure sprint.

Okay,

there it is, everybody.

Um, prison, several different things.

You know, drugs, skateboarding, all kind of crazy things that, you know ...

Skateboarding was only a good thing, though.

But a lot of, you know, things that weren't good.

You know, not being yourself and falling.

And, like, I mean, half of what I know is just from subconsciously being, being exposed to the skate scene.

Yeah.

Skateboarding is, uh...

I had all this stuff.

that happened already we have ground control already we have this we have that and so they believed in me just like the council and they said yes and now we're in three years now we did it for three years now in there we're coming up on the fourth crazy and we do like live performances and everything i have to know how the kids reacted like because how did they feel well imagine like I mean, you got to see like the no skateboarding signs around here, right? Skateboarding is kind of an outlawed sport.

Well, not sport, but it's just, it's outlawed, you know? And so skaters know that.

They know that they might not be welcome everywhere.

It's a stage, a studio, a garden, a classroom, and a proof of concept.

That when a community is told it has nothing, someone who grew up there can decide to make that the starting point, not the end of the story.

Links to Ground Control, Lakota Skateboarding, and ways to support their community are in the show notes.

I'm your host, Ashley Seaford.