51-year-old California skateboarder doesn’t take Olympic gold, but wins over Paris crowd

PARIS – Andy Macdonald brought an electric-powered skateboard with him to the Olympics.

“So I can zip around the village, because the village is huge,” Macdonald said of his home for the past week. “That’s been the joy of this trip. It’s really just surreal. I’ve been staying up until 2 in the morning and waking up at 6 in the morning just to experience everything I can in the village, just seeing the world come together in sports.

“You’re going around and thinking, ‘Wow, that guy’s from North Korea, that guy’s from Sierra Leone.’ I’m going up to them: ‘You’re from Sierra Leone. What’s your sport? What’s your story? How did you get here? Your story must be gnarly.’”

His story is, too. The longtime San Diego County resident just skated in the park event … for Great Britain … at age 51.

And skated well.

He didn’t win a medal, but there’s no doubt he won over the sellout crowd surrounding the cement bowl in Place de la Concorde.

“I knew it was going to be fun, but the crowd from the get-go was like, ‘Yeah for the old guy!’” Macdonald said. “And as a bonus, I skated well. I felt like I was representing twice. I wanted to represent for the old guys and do my best skating, but more importantly I wanted to show on this world stage that skateboarding is the funnest thing out there.

“Hopefully that came across.”

Macdonald, who qualified for British citizenship through his father, landed all elements of his opening run in the preliminary round, except the final one – a backflip flying out of the bowl onto the deck. He perfected it on his second run, though, drawing a huge ovation and a score of 76.61.

Of particular pride was the second trick in the run, a Nollie heel flip.

“It’s a trick that I invented,” Macdonald said. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to fall at the Olympics on a trick that I invented.’ I was super nervous.”

His third run was even better, a 77.66.

That put him in 18th place in the 22-man field, out of the evening finals but ahead of an 18-year-old from Spain and a 16-year-old from Denmark — both younger than his son.

Macdonald looked into the cameras, said hi to his kids back home and added: “Your dad’s in the Olympics.”

Standing and cheering from a bowl-side box was skateboarding legend Tony Hawk, who lives down the street from Macdonald in Encinitas and skates with him regularly on the vert ramp.

“I was really proud of Andy,” Hawk said later. “He’s representing our generation. Andy was always one of the No. 1 vert skaters in the 1990s and 2000s, and he’s never lost a step. For him to come here and do his whole routine, for me that was the viral moment.”

Macdonald prefers the vert ramp and spent the past year adjusting to shorter transitions between tricks and shorter walls. He admitted this was probably the final competitive park event of his career, but he just might stick around and try for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles if they add a vert event.

“That will be next level, because that’s so more exciting to watch,” Macdonald said. “It’s such a miss if they don’t. Guys are flying 30 feet in the air. You don’t have to know anything about skateboarding to be impressed.”

Hawk is working on it. It took him decades to get park and street skateboarding in the Summer Games. Now he’s been actively campaigning for a vert ramp similar to snowboarding’s halfpipe that quickly became one of the marquee events in the Winter Games.

“(They) should figure it out,” Hawk said of skating world governing body. “I’ve been trying my best to have words with them at every turn here. I mean, it’s L.A., what people consider the birthplace of modern skateboarding. We should celebrate all styles of skateboarding there.”

And, possibly, all generations of skaters.