Skating over injuries to perform tricks

Action sport

Here’s a sport that gives you the freedom to do crazy stuff and ignites the yearning to experiment and come up with crazier things. Skating may not be a galli game here as it is in the West but it has caught on among the young boys and girls in India, and Bangalore is no exception. This is what a handful of foreign skaters who were in the City for an event had to say.

Boys and girls in the West are gifted a skateboard when they are barely five years old, thanks to their adventurous spirit. A few foreign skaters were here in the City and they spoke about how they got hooked to the sport and what keeps them addicted to it.Most of them are professional skaters who pursue the sport full-time or have taken it up as a hobby but they confess that they don’t venture out unless they have had their share of training and are well-informed about the sport. For Westerners, skating is a common sport which can be found in every street corner. It’s ingrained in their culture and in their way of life as well.

Jannik Svejdal from Denmark confesses that he took to skating as a teenager but discontinued the sport due to injuries and it has been less than two years since Jannik got back to it. “It’s an extreme sport and gives you the freedom of mind and body to do and experiment with the moves you want. When you skate, you train your mind to think really fast and act even faster,” Jannik shares.

Martin Lindgreen from Sweden has a lot of small cuts and bruises on his knee and arms but he brushes it off with a smile. “That’s common in skating. You are bound to fall. Skating has given me the freedom to develop a style of my own,” he says. Martin started skating when he was 12 years old and even after eight years, he says he never tires of attempting something new everyday.

Victor Sprengel is also from Germany and he almost gave up skating after he met with an accident, where he broke his elbow during one of the skating events. He says that he is too addicted to the sport to give it up. “I realised that this sport has not only given me the confidence but also made me a stronger individual. It has done me more good than bad,” he explains. He feels mastering the moves may involve a lot of injuries. “But looking back, it’s been worth every fall,” he states.

Baumi Baumsen from Germany was only six years old when his uncle gifted him a skateboard on his birthday. He recollects that he would spend hours trying to balance on the skateboard. “I would spend time before and after school on the skates. Regular practice developed my reflexes and I began trying out a lot of tricks which I now teach and train other people through my skate crew called Zwier Crew, which I started a few years ago,” concludes Baumi.