TOKYO (AP) – At 46, the second oldest skateboarder hopes to avoid a heart attack and have a lot of fun at the Tokyo Games. Should not be a problem. For Dallas Oberholzer, fun is a life’s work.
“I’ve never had a real job. I’ve never applied for a job, ”he says. “My whole life has been just skateboarding. I’m just addicted. “
The young guns of skateboarding, with their recommendations and boards that bear their name, have bigger tricks and bigger Instagram followers than the grizzled South African with a salt-and-pepper beard. Oberholzer doesn’t expect to beat them when they compete against each other in Tokyo’s giant, purpose-built Olympic skate bowl this week.
But Oberholzer has great stories woven from a nomadic existence on four squeaky polyurethane wheels. If skateboarding is the punk rock sport of games, disruptive and doesn’t take itself too seriously, then Oberholzer is his Iggy Pop – raw, wild and worn out, someone who can talk and talk and talk.
For example, when he was working as a concert chauffeur and driving Janet Jackson’s dancers around. Or his 16-month road trip from Canada to Argentina after completing his studies with a marketing degree that he soon had no use for.
He calls himself “just a collection of experiences”. Another description could be: a mascot for middle-aged people everywhere, hoisting the flag of Generation X against Gens Y and Z.
“I won’t win. I won’t get a medal, ”he says. “But I’m rightly the best guy in Africa. By default, the best man in Africa goes to the Olympic Games. “
“It’s just incredibly epic,” he adds. “All expenses have been paid for and it will be the best course I’ve ever ridden in my life.”
Only Rune Glifberg, aka “the Danish destroyer” and also 46 years old, is (by eight months) older than Oberholzer among the 80 men and women who will compete in the Olympic debut of the skateboard in Tokyo.
At the men’s park competition on Thursday, Oberholzer and Glifberg, with their spiky strands of gray speckled hair, will meet skaters who are less than half their age.
At the women’s event on Wednesday there are even younger skaters: Kokona Hiraki from Japan is only 12. At the women’s street event in week 1, three young teenagers – 13, 13 and 16 – won gold, silver and bronze.
“I have nothing to lose, nothing to prove. I know that I’m 46 years old and I just have to keep my cardio up so I can stay on my skateboard for 45 seconds, ”says Oberholzer. “I’ll be the one to smile, brother. I hope. Or I’ll have a slight heart attack. “
The age range of skating is remarkably wide for an Olympic event and testifies to the inclusiveness of the sport. In July, figure skating pioneer Tony Hawk competed in the X Games at the age of 53 and was beaten by a 12-year-old Gui Khury. The sport’s coffee cup read: “Skaters don’t get old, they just get new bikes.”
“Skateboarding definitely makes you younger,” says Glifberg. “It’s not just a physical thing. It has a lot to do with style and grace and just the way you present yourself on the board. “
While Gens Y and Z had “how-to” videos on YouTube and Instagram to teach them tricks, Oberholzer and Glifberg had to find their own way.
Glifberg started around the time Back to the Future started getting kids to skate in 1985. For Oberholzer it was a rented VHS copy of the 1986 film “Thrashin” about skateboard gangs that “made all our eyeballs shine”. . ”
Until then, his sport had been tennis.
“I remember thinking to myself, ‘I could play tennis and let the ball have all the fun or I could be the ball,'” he recalls. “And I think, ‘I want to be the ball. I want to be the one flying around. ‘”
Anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela was still in prison when Oberholzer began taking buses into central Johannesburg to look for places to skate. Trained like other white South Africans, separated from black children, Oberholzer began on his board to meet and mingle with black peers who also skate.
“It really helped me get over my apartheid upbringing,” he says.
In return, Oberholzer gives something back. He uses skateboarding to reach out to kids in difficult neighborhoods, keep them away from drugs and gangs, and help them develop their skills. The Indigo Youth Movement he founded has built several skate parks and ramps.
But none of this impressed his mother Linda as much as qualifying for the Olympic Games.
“My mother is finally happy with my life choices, brother. Do you know what a good feeling that is? It took so long for my mother to realize what I was doing with my life, ”he says. “That’s probably the best thing I get when my mom finally says ‘Wow’.”
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AP multimedia journalist John Leicester, who lives in Paris, reports on his eighth Olympic Games. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/johnleicester. More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2020-tokyo-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
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