One of the breakout sports of the Olympics was undoubtedly skateboarding, although that probably needs a bit of clarification.
It was a breakout sport to those who may not have had an interest in it in the past, but it certainly was not to the many people that take part around the world.
It was estimated in 2016 – when the sport was added to the Games – that there were 85 million skateboarders worldwide, according to Statista.com. It is just that in the mainstream media, there is seldom any mention of it.
Do not be fooled about the popularity though.
Max Jamieson has been running Shredder Skate School since 2016, having been one of the ‘Tony Hawk’s generation’, skateboarders around the world who were inspired by the computer game.
“There were loads of people who got into it around the time when they started coming out, and I’m considered one of those,” explains Jamieson, who was then 14.
“Me and my friend went away somewhere and he had his Playstation with the new Tony Hawk’s game and we just played it for the whole week.
“Then, when we went home we said, ‘let’s get skateboards’. Because we got skateboards, a couple of our other friends got skateboards and we all started skating together.
“No matter how good you get at skateboarding, that feeling is the same. For a beginner learning something new, you still get that same buzz of self accomplishment as someone that is a professional doing something new.
“You can go anywhere in the world and it is one big family.”
It will no doubt be helped by Team GB’s 13-year-old Sky Brown winning the bronze medal in the skateboarding park discipline – there were two types of competition in Japan, park and freestyle.
“I’m known as the Tony Hawk’s generation, we’re probably going to have a Sky Brown generation from this,” says Jamieson, who has had an instant increase in interest and emails about coaching.
Many of the competitors in the women’s park competition in Tokyo were in their teens, which is a reflection that Jamieson has seen of more girls taking up the sport.
“One great thing that I’ve noticed about the skate school is how it can get young girls into skateboarding more easily because maybe a young girl, eight or nine, wants to learn to skateboard,” he explains.
“They get a skateboard, go to a skate park and it’s full of older teenage boys, quite an intimidating atmosphere for a young girl that doesn’t know how to skateboard. So they can join the school, a relaxed atmosphere, learn how to skate and then eventually they will probably be able to go to a skate park and be better than those teenage boys.”