Skateboarder Andy Macdonald is 51 and has qualified for Paris 2024. He celebrated his birthday on July 31 en route to the French capital.
MacDonald is a skateboarding legend who has been skating professionally since 1985, is friends with Tony Hawk, and was the first to skateboard through the White House.
The British-American decided to try for the Olympics after watching Tokyo 2020. This makes him the oldest person to ever skateboard at the Olympics.
His only other Team GB teammates are two teenage girls: Sky Brown and Lola Tambling, both 16.
Let's hear from him in the first person.
Andy on His First Olympics Experience
[It's been] pretty surreal. It really is just next-level surreal. The whole process. In 2022, when friends of mine were like, 'Hey, you're British, go get your British passport and go for the national team - that's your path to the Olympics.' I thought, 'Do you think?!' I just kind of hummed and hawed about it, but the more I talked to friends and colleagues who had done that [getting a passport to compete], the more it made sense.
I had a conversation with my wife and was like, I'm not a professional skateboarder anymore since the pandemic. Up until the pandemic, for 30 years, that's how we made our living. Dad went out and earned money skateboarding, and that's how we paid the bills.
And then the pandemic ended all that. Then I sat and watched the Olympics [in Tokyo, 2021], and I just kind of felt bad for people that had made it because it was like Keegan Palmer, gold medalist, texting his dad, 'Hey, I won!' Your dad should [have been] there, you know? There was nobody there. And it almost didn't seem like it was a real first experience. And then, looking toward Paris, there'll be millions of people there, as there should be.
I talked to some friends of mine, particularly [skateboarders] Lizzy Armanto and Amelia Brodka, who are both based in the States but [have] passports from other countries. Finland and Poland. And they were just like, 'Absolutely!' Amelia, in particular, was my champion. She's like, 'Go and do that, you've got this!' I was like, 'I'm old!' She's like, 'I don't care.'
So I went and got my British passport and went to British Nationals in the spring of 2022, and then I'm getting third place and got selected for a spot on the team. And, yeah, I had this conversation with my wife, like, 'Hey, I'm on the British national team; they'll pay for my way to go to these international qualifier events; it won't cost us money.' And she gave me her blessing.
I was like, 'Is that crazy?!' She's just like, you're crazy not to! So, for the past two / two and a half years, I've been traveling around the world with the British National Team. All internationally. I went to Rio de Janeiro twice, Rome twice, Dubai three times, Argentina twice, and then most recently, Shanghai, and now we're in Budapest.
On Having to Change His Style of Skateboarding
I was talking with somebody from Skateboard Great Britain last night, and they were trying to understand, 'But you're not; this isn't what you do.' I mean, it's what I do. I skateboard, and I've been skateboarding; I'm a great skateboarder, but it would be like if you were on the swim team and you swim freestyle for the swim team, you've been racing all your life, and then somebody was like, 'you're playing water polo now.' Yeah, I can swim, but I don't play water polo.
I've made my living as a vert skater; people know me as riding halfpipe ramps back and forth on the X Games. [I have] more X Games halfpipe medals than any other athlete. And now, I'm gonna go skatepark, and a halfpipe is 14 feet tall. The deepest part of these park bowls that we ride, most of the rides, is usually nine feet tall. So there's a five-foot difference in height, first of all, and so everything's quicker and smaller.
You can't go as high; you don't have as much time to execute your tricks in the air, so everything happens way faster. And then there's the three-dimensional aspect of it, because you're in a bowl, not just doing back and forth two-dimensional tricks, so you have to pump around the bowl and find your line, which became increasingly more important, as we got towards Dubai, Shanghai, and Budapest.
In those last three contests, they built the park on-site, and then they just destroy it afterward. So, you get two 45-minute practice sessions to get your whole routine down. In Dubai, it was before they made the 44 cut, so there were 132 athletes all vying to try and get their line down. So they had 40-minute heats with 15 other skaters.
You literally didn't get to ride in the bowl by yourself ever. You rode with your head on a swivel, trying not to crash into people. The contest wasn't about what tricks you can do; it was about what tricks you can do safely in traffic. And that was super stressful. So [it's been] very different competition skating than I had ever really done.
On His Role Helping Skateboarding Become an Olympic Sport in the First Place
I was a founding member of USA Skateboarding back in 2006 when we were first talking about the Olympics. It came from NBC. Actually, NBC owns the rights to the Olympics for the next 40 years in the United States, and they also owned, at the time, the Gravity Games [a multi-sport extreme sports competition that ran until 2006] that became The Dew Tour.
They saw what snowboarding had done for the Winter [Olympic] Games. In particular, halfpipe snowboarding, and they're like, 'Let's push for skateboarding in the Summer Games,' which will do the same, giving us that youth demographic that they need so badly. And so I was very involved in the beginning.
Then once it started getting serious, we looked at our board, and we're a bunch of white males, and we're like, 'We've got to have some diversity.' So I relinquished that role and just kind of took a backseat and watched it go. I've always been an advocate for it.
On How Skateboarding Has Changed Since Becoming an Olympic Sport
As skateboarding was heading toward the Olympics, there has always been a contingent that I call 'the Thrasher mentality.' The Thrasher mentality was 'if skateboarding is in the Olympics, it's going to ruin skateboarding; skateboarding started in the streets in the backyards, and that's where it needs to stay.'
They said the same thing when X Games came on in 1995. 'If skateboarding's on TV, it's going to ruin skateboarding,' and even going into that experience 25 years ago, I was like, no, it's going to make skateboarding bigger and better.
And this core skateboarding, if you want to call it that - people jumping fences, and skating in school yards and people skating backyard pools - even on the day of the X Games, even on the day of the Olympics, that's going on. People are still skating in backyard pools and skating in schoolyards, but that's not affected. It doesn't affect this.
And, in fact, you could argue that if it did affect it, it would affect it in a positive way. When you're next getting kicked out by the security guard for street skating, you could be like, "Hey, man, I'm training for the Olympics!"
It's certainly brought, just since Tokyo, particularly internationally, much more exposure, obviously to skateboarding, and made skateboarding more accessible to more people than it ever has been. Because now, in every other country, except for America, some money from your government goes toward Olympic sports, and that goes toward developing that Olympic discipline. So the opportunity for me to ride for Great Britain and help with some of that.
I go to Britain, and I'm like, you guys are 15 years behind the United States, maybe 20 years behind, as far as facilities, as far as mentality, as far as the public perception of skateboarders, almost like the 1980s.
When I was growing up in the 1980s in America, if we were on a skateboard it was like, 'You're just some punk troublemaker disrespecting authority, breaking public property'. There was no image that you were an athlete and that these athletes were just as gifted and talented as any NBA football player.
On Being a Trailblazer to Make Skateboarding Be Seen as a Sport
[With] the Olympics, we've come leaps and bounds. At first, it was the X Games, and we started to understand, and I was a part of that. I became a household name because of the X Games, and I was always like, hey, I don't have any tattoos, I don't drink, I don't smoke, and I take this seriously. I'm an athlete. That was kind of my first time in skateboarding, and I've had a hard time in my career because of that.
Coming up in the 1990s, I was shunned because of that, 'You don't party, you skate too much, you're a trainer.' they used to call me Trainer, and I've never trained - to this day, I don't train! My team tries to get me to train and do weights and stuff like that. I just can't get into that; just take me skating.
On Training with 13-year-old Teammate Tommy Calvert and How They've Both Proved Skateboarding Is For Everyone and For All Ages
That's just obvious. In what other sport does it happen that, on a competitive level, there's a 50-year-old against a 12-year-old? I think that that's special to skateboarding. Maybe it could happen in a sport like surfing, but it hasn't yet. And we're still finding out what skaters can do into your 50s and 60s.
Some of the icons that I grew up admiring are turning 60, like Steve Caballero. Tony Hawk is 56, and they're still skateboarding. And so we're still discovering how long you can do it. Before I came to this event, I was in Salt Lake City.
Tony Hawk does a contest there every year, and the night before the contest, we do the Legends. And the Legends demo is just as, or more popular than, the actual contest on Saturday because there's that much more history to it. There are the kids that want to see the legends.
But then there are the adults who are the parents of the kids who grew up with skateboarding because skateboarding, for the first time in its history, is old enough that there are generations of skateboarders. It's not just the new kids' thing.
On What Friends Like Tony Hawk Make of Him Going to the Olympics
They think I'm crazy. Just because, generally the guys that have been able to continue skating at this level or, call it what you will, milk their career into their 50s, are generally vert skaters. I think it's a physical thing; it's less brutal on your body to ride a halfpipe than to jump down stairs.
When you ride a halfpipe, the physics of it are the revs are 14 feet high, and you're flying seven, eight feet above it, but when you fall, you slide down, and the ramp catches you, and you slide on your knees.
There's an impact, and my lower back hurts all the time! I'm shorter now than I was when I was 20. But it's not like when you jump downstairs, there's nothing; you just go over and over and over, and you can't do that. I can jump down three stairs, maybe, but I used to jump down 15. And so, a vert skater's career often can be made longer than a street skater's.
So all those guys [like Tony Hawk, Steve Cabalerro] are vert skaters, and now they're like, 'You're going to go skatepark?!' That's the hardest. Park is smaller, there's less transition to catch you, and it's made of cement, not wood. Half pipes are made of wood, and they give, no matter what, even if it's a steel frame ramp, it gives a little bit when you hit it when you fall on it. Cement does not give; it lets you know!
And because the transition is so small, when you're up here, if you come out wrong, you just go 'woo' straight to the bottom. Whereas if the transition is big, you come out a little bit, you still get caught and you slide down. So it hurts more to ride park skating. It's been hard on my body. But it's also been the funnest and most challenging thing I've done on my skateboard in a long time.
Frustrating at times because there are tricks that I can do every time on the half-pipe and that I go to the skate park and do on the small transitions, and it takes me 10 times to do it once. 'I can do this trick, but can you do it here?'
On Skateboarding Fashion Over the Years
I've seen it come and go. I'm old enough that I've seen the fashions from the early 1990s. You had to be skating in acid-washed jeans and a white t-shirt, and you couldn't have any logos. And then hip-hop came in. Everybody had super big in 1992. I had size 40 pants, baggy as triple extra large T-shirts.
And then it came back down, and people were working punk rock stuff again like they did in the 1970s and 1980s. It's cyclical. I've never really been that bothered by it. I've always had clothing sponsors, and I just wear the clothes that my clothing sponsor has [given me].
These days, I ride for Patagonia. That's right in line with my morals, my scruples, in riding for Patagonia, but it's probably my age too. There are probably more 50-year-olds wearing Patagonia than 20-year-olds!
On the Importance of Music to Skateboarding
I was introduced, oddly enough, to reggae music through friends of mine who skateboard, and I've always been a big fan of reggae music. But punk rock has also always been a part of hip-hop. So those are basically my three genres. I get into jazz, but not when I'm skating. It's weird that you don't get to pick your music at the Olympic level.
For years on the pro tour, when you showed up to register for your event, part of what you filled out was your name, age, health information, blah, blah. And then you pick two songs for your two routines, and you just don't get to anymore. The DJ just plays whatever he wants. For a long time, I skated to a band called The Pixies. I skated to hip hop, some Public Enemy with some Anthrax. Bring the noise.
On His Music Playlist and Song Choices
To rev me up skating, there would be some old-school punk rock, there would be like Agent Orange, Operation Ivy, and then maybe some Clash and The Specials. And then to chill me out, it would be reggae, maybe some hip hop, it'd be like Tribe Called Quest, 1990s hip hop. And then it'd be like Gregory Isaacs and Pato Banton.
On Skateboarding Being Good for Mental Health
Absolutely. It's all I have. All I've had since I was 12 years old. Physically, obviously, you're outside. That's the only physical exercise that I get unless it's like yard work or something. If I don't go skate for three days, my wife will just be like,' Get out of here, you're so annoying, getting on my nerves, go skate!' And everyone will be happier for it. It's just that outlet, that release, that everybody needs. Some people go for a run or go to the gym. For me, it's skateboarding. Always has been.
On Celebrating His 51st Birthday During the Paris Olympics
I will be celebrating my birthday on the train from London with the British National Team on the way through the channel. With my family, hopefully. My whole crew.
Message for People Watching his Skateboarding Journey
Just don't give up. Age is just a number, so don't give up on your dreams, as cheesy as that sounds. Just go for it. Find what it is that's your passion, and then worry about trying to make a living doing it. That's what I tell my kids [when they ask] where they should study, what sports they should do, and what they are going to do for a living.
I'm like, you've just got to go out in the world and find out what you enjoy doing, and that's the most important thing. Once you figure that out and you find something that you love, then the rest will fall into place. If you really love it, you'll find a way to make a living doing that.
Quick Fire Questions
If you weren't a skateboarder, what would you be?
I would probably be like a snowboarder or snowboard instructor or snowboard guide in the winter season and a whitewater rafting instructor in the summertime, or a skydive instructor. Something outside, something action sports oriented.
Do you have a good luck charm?
I have superstitions. I always put my left knee pad on first. I have noticed that when I skate, I always do a frontside rock and roll before; it's just like a 1970s trick, but a very kind of roots fun trick to do. I always press that rock and roll before I take my run. It just reminds me this is just fun. This is just skateboarding. Take all the pressure, the sponsors, the qualifying, and all that stuff away, and they're still just having a good time skateboarding, which is what I've been doing anyway.
What is the best thing to happen to you this year or this month?
I qualified for the Olympic Games!
Where will we find you after the Olympics? Will you be rushing off for a holiday, rushing back home to chill?
As my schedule is right now, I will be rushing to Toronto, Canada, for three weeks for demos!
What's on your travel bucket list?
Japan. I love Japan. It's at the top of the list. Anytime I can go to Japan, I will go. And India, anywhere in India. I've been to both of those places, but I haven't been to India since 2012, and I haven't been to Japan since the 1990s. I have had a taste of it, and I want to go back.
Places that I've never been to are more like I see pictures of islands in the South Pacific, and I imagine it would be cool just to be in super warm water. And just like a Fiji vacation with my wife. That's what I think about these days.
Favorite destination?
Probably Tokyo. And home, where I live in Southern California, Encinitas, California. All the traveling I've done - I'm a million-mile flyer on United, just that one airline. I've been doing this for 30 years, traveling around the world. Every time I come home, I'm like, 'I live in the best place.'
What's the one thing you must pack when traveling?
Obviously, skateboard skate gear. I try to get a good book, which seems to be harder and harder these days. Sweets. I kind of put the 'Andy' in candy. I'm the only Pro Skater that I know that had a sponsor. I used to ride for Red Vines licorice for a couple of years. I got paid to eat candy for a long time. That's my one vice. I don't drink. I don't smoke, but I'm down to eat candy!
Top skateparks around the world?
In the past few years, there are so many new parks. They're building new places, and they're continually evolving. There's one in Marseille in the South of France that's on the beach in the Mediterranean.
We used to go every summer in the 1990s, and you skate, you get all hot, and then you jump in the ocean. That park is a really well-designed park and has aged well, design-wise and stuff. So you can still have fun. It's got to be at least 35 years old.
Words by Kimberley Dadds | Writer and Editor