Who cares about Olympic results? 51-year-old skateboard pioneer has fun among a group of kids
2024-08-13
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Compared to the unknown South African "grassroots uncle" Oberholzer, 51-year-old Andrew McDonald is a completely different type of person.
He is a pioneer of skateboarding. Everyone in this place knows him. If they have not trained and competed with him, they have at least seen his performance videos. "When these kids were born, I was already in the skate park. Many of them may have had their first experience of skateboarding taught by me. Then a few years passed, I was still there, and they got better and better. Now they beat me in the Olympics." MacDonald is very proud, but he has the capital - he has been the top skateboarder since the first X Games (World Extreme Games). Until ten years ago, MacDonald held the record for the most medals in the X Games vertical skateboarding competition (Vert).
"Skateboarding is old enough now and has a history, and I am part of it." MacDonald often boasts about his history book-"When I see my teammates who are in their teens trying new tricks, I probably know who invented it. Maybe I was there at the time, or maybe I invented it myself."
Or how did the first page of French skateboarding history begin? "The last time I was here was 16 years ago, when I was doing a demonstration with Tony Hawk (skateboarding's greatest legend, MacDonald's competition partner and close friend) at the Grand Palais in Paris. There were about 5,000 people in the Grand Palais, and Tony did a 900-degree turn. That wasn't enough, he pulled Liz Adams here to do a 540-degree turn for women in history. That's history."
This demonstration was the last time that MacDonald and his wife went to Paris. His wife went to university in Paris and loved France. MacDonald promised her that he would have the opportunity to visit Paris again, but he never fulfilled his promise, so he "just went to the Paris Olympics". Because each country and region has a quota limit, MacDonald, who is over 50 years old, is no longer able to qualify for the US team. He chose to represent his father's home country, Britain, and "experienced every situation, including the worst situation" in the qualifying rounds. He experienced the "nine stars in a row" of luck and finally waited for the "best result".
McDonald, fully equipped, looked like an older athlete, perhaps in his 30s. Compared to Oberholzer, who couldn't jump high, McDonald's every move still made the audience exclaim. The first move was a slight flaw when he fell at the end of the landing; the second set of gliding added "grabbing the board with the front hand and pushing the front foot" - this move was invented by him and named "McDonald Jump", which was neat and flawless. Standing firmly on the starting platform, McDonald looked up to the sky and shouted: "This is all! This is all!"
With 77.66 points, the skateboard pioneer's score was not far behind his younger rivals. But the score was not important. What was important was to complete the competition and have fun in "one's only" Olympic performance. "Every emotion you can think of, relief, excitement, adrenaline rushing. This is the Olympics."
Just as MacDonald completed his last jump on the Olympic stage, Tony Hawk, wearing a white shirt, applauded his best skateboard partner in the stands. Perhaps at this moment, he would think of himself and Andrew MacDonald 30 years ago.
(Our Paris correspondent, August 7)
Author: Shen Lei
Text: Special correspondent of this newspaper/Shen Lei Photo: Oriental IC Editor: Wu Yulun Responsible editor: Chen Haixiang
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