Andy Macdonald, the 51-year-old California skateboarder, ready for Olympic close-up
PARIS – Andy Macdonald’s wife had lived in Paris, and when they got married he promised to take her there as often as he could. They went a few years later, when their oldest son was a toddler.
That was 15 years ago. They hadn’t been back.
Six weeks ago, he was in Budapest, Hungary, for the final Olympic qualifying event for skateboarding, and FaceTimed his wife back home in Encinitas.
Says Macdonald: “I told her: ‘Hey, honey, you know how I promised to take you to Paris as often as I could when I married you and I haven’t taken you in 15 years? What do you say I make it up to you and take you to Paris this summer.’
“She was blank-faced. Didn’t get it at all. Then my little 8-year-old pops her face into the camera and says, ‘Dad, are we going to the Olympics?’ I was like, ‘Yessss!’”
Better late than never. Macdonald turned 51 last week.
He’s representing Great Britain in skateboarding’s park event, which is Tuesday for the women and Wednesday for the men in a bowl constructed on the picturesque Place de la Concorde. The 22-man field has seven teenagers. The other four competitors in Macdonald’s first-round heat are 29, 27, 22 and 17.
He’s got a son 2 years older than the other two Team GB skaters, who are both 16.
“I’m Uncle Andy,” he says.
But it’s not like he’s a guy who discovered the sport late, or returned after a hiatus, or got some sort of charity spot from an underrepresented country to fill out the field. Macdonald is No. 25 in the world rankings. He’s a legend on the megaramp, winner of multiple X Games titles, the subject of YouTube skate videos, buddies with Tony Hawk, an influential figure in the development of the sport, a household name in the San Diego skateboard community.
“The age thing is a big deal to the media, and that’s about it,” Macdonald says. “It’s hard to explain. People are like, ‘You’re 50 and these guys are teenagers?’ Yeah, but it’s not like I left and this is some comeback. I was at the skatepark when (U.S. team member) Tom Schaar was a little grom, like 9 years old.
“I was there the whole time. I never went anywhere. I’ve been doing this.”
He didn’t attempt to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics three years ago, but two local women who did for other nations encouraged him to try for Paris because, well, didn’t he say his father is English?
He called his father in Michigan and asked about getting a British passport.
‘He said, ‘Why would you want to do that? I don’t even have a British passport,’” MacDonald says.
His father was born in Luton outside London but moved to the United States with his family during World War II at age 5. A British law grants citizenship to any siblings born before 1983.
That was the easy part. Now he had to qualify.
“A Hail Mary long shot,” Macdonald says.
Entering the final qualifier in Budapest, he was ranked 38th and needed to reach the 16-man semifinals to climb into the top 25 and make the Paris field.
He fell on his first preliminary run.
He fell on his second.
The board went sideways on a jump in this third and he was about to fall again, only to reach down, grab the board, stuff it under his foot and save “the run of my life.”
That put him in sixth place with the top 11 skaters still to go, and the first 10 scored higher. But Brazil’s Pedro Barros — world champion, Olympic silver medalist, ranked sixth in the world — uncharacteristically fell on all three runs. Macdonald was in the semis. Macdonald was in the Olympics.
“All the planets aligned for him,” Hawk says. “I’m really stoked for him.”
Macdonald grew up outside Boston, developed a passion for skateboarding and moved to San Diego shortly after high school in 1992 because, as he puts it, “if you want to become an actor or actress, you go to Hollywood, and if you want to become a professional skateboarder, you come to San Diego.”
His first job was at SeaWorld, posing for photos in a furry Shamu suit while trying not to trip over its flipper feet. Pay: $4.75 per hour. He was sleeping on a friend’s couch in Ocean Beach.
He quit SeaWorld and turned pro in 1994. In 1998, a reader’s poll in Transworld Skateboarding magazine named him the “best overall skater.” In 1999, he skated down a marble hallway at the White House as part of an anti-drug event. He’s won 22 X Games medals, including eight golds.
Now, the Olympics.
Just keeping his promise.
“He’s been competing for 30-something years, which is crazy,” says Schaar, part of the three-man U.S. park team. “He’s still doing tricks that no one else is really doing. That’s kind of the beauty of skating. It doesn’t matter where you’re from or who you are. If you’re that guy, you can make it.”
Point Loma’s Tate Carew, who is 32 years younger, is also on the U.S. team. Macdonald had already been pro for 11 years when Carew was born.
“It’s amazing to watch him skate, his trick selection, the way he can string runs together, it’s pretty unreal,” Carew says. “If you can make it in this day and age and qualify for Paris, there is no one who can talk down upon you. I have a lot of respect for Andy.”
That backflip over the jump box that 16-year-old Sky Brown, one of the women’s park favorites, does? Macdonald was the first to do it.
The Nollie frontside heel flip the Brazilian men are so fond of? Macdonald’s as well.
“I see myself as being the guy who knows the history of the sport, who was there,” Macdonald says. “I can tell them when learning a new trick, ‘Here’s who invented it and how it got its name.’
“Or: ‘I invented that trick.’”