Three years ago, a video of a little girl — frock flying, helmet locked in to control unruly locks, knee guards and protective gear in place — went viral. Five-year-old Janaki Anand, on a skateboard as big as her, wouldn’t know; she was busy shredding the stairs and doing other tricks, watched on by curious onlookers and her proud parents.
It wasn’t just her skill that was noticed back then. Skateboarding, a sport so alien in India that most people think of it as a public nuisance, has been having a moment ever since its debut as a competitive sport at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. It made many Indians sit up and take note of the newest medal possibility, and since then, an increasing number of youngsters have picked up the board-on-wheels, aided by a developing infrastructure and growing recognition for the sport. Anand, meanwhile, has gone from girl wonder to multiple-times national champion, and is finding more skate-buddies her age.
“Janaki has known about skating ever since she was little. We were in Dubai back then and I used to go around on a skateboard; it is a very common thing to do there. My elder son Rehan too does it, so Janaki has always seen a board at our home. It was two years ago, when we decided to return, that she became known as the youngest skateboarder in India,” says her father Anand Thampi from Kollam, Kerala.
A different lifestyle
Skateboarding, for a lot of people, is a quintessential American sport. More than a sport, it is a lifestyle, with its own vocabulary for the various tricks performed. Shredding, for instance, is the act of skating down surfaces like stairs, using parts of the board other than the wheels, and requires tremendous skill.
Mumbai-based Urmila Pabale, who began skateboarding about three-and-a-half years ago, only knew of it as something Peter Parker did. It was very Hollywood. “I have been roller-skating since I was five and have always been into sports and the outdoors, but even for me it was a surreal experience to see people on skateboards in India for the first time. It was just after the lockdown, I was 16, and had heard of a newly-built skate park in Navi Mumbai, near my home. I went there and just stared — this was something I had only seen in the Spiderman movies,” says the final-year communications student of Khalsa College.
Urmila Pabale from Mumbai
There is no denying the cool quotient of the activity that attracts most children to it in the first place. Sareena Coutinho, also from Mumbai, and at 20 a veteran of the women’s skateboarding community, admits she started out for a lark. Pune’s Shraddha Gaikwad, 18, who won gold at the 2022 National Games held in Gujarat — the only time skateboarding featured in the competition; it was dropped in the Goa edition last year and its fate remains uncertain this year — picked it up by chance, getting on a spare board while delivering lunch to her security guard father who worked at a sporting goods store. They all agree that once boarded, it is difficult to get off the wooden plank.
Sareena Coutinho from Mumbai
National Games gold medallist Shraddha Gaikwad
Meet the OGs
Most skaters in India are students — either in school or college, with the average age being 20-22 years — and while it is not easy to manage studies with skateboarding, the thrill of it makes it all worthwhile. And then there is Bengaluru-based Gautham Kamath, who, at 36, is the grand old man of Indian skateboarding but more importantly, the founder of Jugaad, the first and biggest open skateboarding competition in the country, founded in 2016.
Beginning with just a handful of newbies, the event has grown to feature more than 500 entries from places as far off as Nepal and the Maldives. For most skateboarders in the country, this is often their first ‘skate jam’ with like-minded individuals. From Gaikwad to Coutinho to Pabale, nearly every Indian skateboarder has cut their teeth at Jugaad.
Gautham Kamath (extreme left) with youngsters at The Cave skatepark in Bengaluru.
“To become a skateboarder, you need a certain calibre — you basically need to have a rebellious streak. You must choose to do it, you cannot be pushed or talked into it. I have been teaching for almost 10 years now, to all types and ages of people. It is relatively new; it is still more of a lifestyle thing than a serious sport and not everyone’s cup of tea. It is not easy to make a living from it. I am a rarity in that sense,” says Kamath, who quit his job with a smartphone company to get into boarding full-time.
Kamath has seen the sport come up from ground zero, having grown with it himself — from his first board being a gift from German skater Arne Hillerns in 2012 to becoming the first-ever official Indian entry at an international event, the Chuncheon World Leisure Extreme Sports Championship in 2016, to organising Jugaad, now in its ninth edition, all on his own. “It is difficult — it takes a toll, you get injured a lot, you fall, but have to get up and keep trying. You need to be stubborn. But it also helps develop your overall personality — it gives you the confidence to approach life, and never give up,” he says.
The Skateboarding In Chennai crew. | Photo Credit: Johan Sathyadas
In Delhi, Surjeet Kumar had his own lofty ambitions — to make the city a skateboarding hub. He set up the Delhi Skateboarders Academy in the basement of a building with wooden ramps, the first indoor venue in India and the site of the first-ever Jugaad in 2016. “The academy has, over the years, trained more than 500 children, of all ages, and the interest is only increasing, especially among girls. Parents too have started seeing it as a proper sport and not just a random pastime,” he reveals.
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He explains the thrill of skateboarding despite the obvious dangers. “As children, there is little fear of falling or failing. That is one of the biggest reasons why there are so many youngsters in the sport. But, I personally think it is just the thrill of doing something most people are wary of. Normal folks will climb down three stairs; I have children who can skate down or fly over 7-8 stairs. It’s just addictive,” says Kumar, now in his 30s. He used to roller-skate as a child and picked up skateboarding on his travels through Europe and the U.S. as a student.
Not without its risks, skateboarding injuries range from a harmless ankle twist to more serious fractures, muscle tears and deep cuts from falls and from the board itself. “Recently, one of our girls got a deep cut on her chin and had to quit the event she was participating in. It took a while to heal and when she returned, she suffered a hairline fracture. But now she is back again. It’s a high that you cannot keep away from,” says Kumar.
More girls, more power
While the sport is unique in its gender neutrality — the equipment, tricks, ramps and surfaces are the same for both boys and girls — the Indian mindset has been restrictive of women getting on the board.
But this is changing. Says Kamath, “There might have been restrictions earlier but not anymore, not for this generation. Parents can’t stop them and anyway, women are way more mature and more aware of things today. In fact, we encourage girls to come out more and although their numbers are still fewer than the boys, their parents are dedicated.”
National Games gold-winning Gaikwad, in fact, was the first girl in her family to travel alone when she went to participate in the 2018 edition of Jugaad. Soon, she was being approached for ad campaigns, be it Patanjali or Pantene, and then the Netflix movie Skater Girl happened. Gaikwad plays the role of the protagonist’s friend in the 2021 film supposedly inspired by the life of Asha Gond, who represented India in the 2018 World Skateboarding Championship.
“The Olympics is a dream, of course, but skateboarding is a passion. I will do it as long as I can and if you are dedicated and work hard, there will always be people to support you,” says Gaikwad, referring to the people who shaped her career — Abu Sheikh, the manager of the store where her father worked, and her coach Swapnil Magare, who spotted her during a workshop at the store.
National Games gold medallist Gaikwad
The inclusion of skateboarding in the Olympics lineup has been a huge catalyst in getting the sport some much-needed recognition, says the community. “Definitely, there is a change. There is more interest from brands, which is big for most of us because we struggle for funds. There is more government recognition — my silver medal at the National Games got me ₹5 lakh from the Maharashtra Olympic Association because it is now an Olympic sport,” says Pabale. “People everywhere are slowly getting to know about skateboarding, and parents are seeing a future in it.”
Coutinho seconds the opinion. “My dad is still against it but my mum has seen me go to competitions and win, so she is kind of okay with it. Also, the increasing participation of girls has helped. When I first stepped into the skatepark on Carter Road in Bandra, I was the only girl there and it felt weird to be amongst so many boys. But then people slowly started appreciating me, they told me I was an inspiration to other girls. I have seen many younger ones coming and skating, and it feels nice. When I tell people it is an Olympic sport, they are genuinely surprised and want to know more,” says Coutinho.
Ground reality
The Olympic dream that these young enthusiasts harbour though is tempered with an awareness of ground realities. “In India, we are at least a decade behind in skills and everything else, and it will take time,” says Pabale. To put things into context, Kokona Hiraki of Japan and Sky Brown of Great Britain, medallists in the park skateboarding category at the Tokyo Olympics, were both 13 at the time. As was Rayssa Leal of Brazil, who won silver in the street category; Japan’s Momiji Nishiya, who won gold, was 14.
Interestingly, while skateboarding is considered a quintessential American sport, the dominant countries, among the women athletes, are Japan, Australia, Brazil and Britain. “There is a long way to go. It will take years probably but the journey has begun and we hope to do our best,” says a confident Coutinho.
Women’s Skateboarding Park medallists (l to r) Kokona Hiraki (silver) and Sakura Yosozumi (gold) of Team Japan and Sky Brown (bronze) of Great Britain, at the Tokyo Olympics 2020. | Photo Credit: Getty Images
Kamath is more circumspect. “Not for another 20 years at least,” he asserts. “And then too, only if there is support from government bodies in terms of participation and facilities.” But the landscape is changing rapidly, no doubt, he admits. From one skate park in 2012 to almost 40 now across the country — from Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai, and Delhi to Chandigarh, Visakhapatnam, Ranchi and Gwalior — the thrill of performing on a plank of wood on wheels is catching on.
Skateboarding, in a sense, is a unique sport with its inherent contradictions: not much equipment required but the one needed does not come cheap, starting at ₹1,000 for a beginner’s board and ₹4,000 for a regular board. It is an aspirational lifestyle but has children mostly from non-privileged or middle-class families. “I could not ask my parents for a board for a long time. I was still in school then and could not buy one for myself either,” Coutinho says.
College-going Pabale, daughter of a single working mother, tries to manage her expenses by herself — from buying boards to travelling and participating in events and generating social media engagement — but admits it is not easy. Says Surjeet of Delhi Skateboarders Academy, “Many parents often donate gear and boards to the less-privileged children who train at our academy for free, and trust me, those are some of the most brilliant youngsters I have seen.”
At the Paris Olympics beginning next week, skateboarder Vareeraya Sukasem from Thailand will be one of the youngest athletes in competition. Videos show the 12-year-old practising her signature move, called The Feeble, as she glides over railings and flips the board before landing on it expertly. The day is not far when an Indian teenager will make the nation of 1.4 billion proud on the Olympics podium. As the likes of Coutinho, Gaikwad and Anand would say, we fly in hope.
A young skateboarding enthusiast in Bengaluru.
uthra.ganesan@thehindu.co.in
