…freestyle mostly features technical flatground tricks like wheelies, handstands, flips and spins, sometimes involving more than one skateboard. Fluidity and motion to music plays a big part in freestyle skateboarding.
Skate Australia
Flatground, tricks that use all parts of the board, and footwork—these three elements combined is what defines freestyle and appeals to its practitioners:
It’s you, the ground, and your board. The ideas and possibilities are endless.
Josh Dunstone, australian pro skater for maple road skateboards
‘Probably the earliest form of competitive skateboarding’ (Skate Australia), freestyle was showcased through competitions in the sixties (Late Tricks) which grew in number and prestige over the decades. In the US, inventor of the ‘flatground ollie’ Rodney Mullen began his career as a professional freestyle skateboarder, dominating contests for many years.
Australia had its own scene, with skaters like Rob ‘Wedge’ Francis and his ‘wheelie kneelie’:
Unfortunately, the nineties decline in skateboarding killed freestyle. As UKFSA Chair Tony Gale (2021) would bluntly put it, ‘anything which wasn’t street skateboarding was taken out back and summarily executed’. Competitions ceased to exist. Freestyle boards weren’t being made, and freestyle pros had to find other jobs to support themselves (Mullen and Mortimer 2004).
The style revived in the noughties, though with little to no support from the mainstream industry. It has since existed separate from the rest of the sport, with its own ecosystem of manufacturers, events, and skaters.
Today, Japan is freestyle’s capital, home to many of the world’s finest freestylers, including Isamu Yamamoto:
North America and Europe are also fast-evolving spaces. Fresh competitions such as the Tucson Thunderdome and the Dutch Freestyle Skateboard Open are popping up alongside the World Round-Up and World Freestyle Skateboarding Championships.
In comparison, Australia is a freestyle backwater. Despite enjoying ‘a rocking skate scene’ as per Transworld SKATEboarding (2002) with ‘a plethora of parks, plenty of local rippers, distributors, shops, and even a couple of manufacturers’, Australians are more likely to associate the word ‘freestyle’ with Ian Thorpe than a skateboarder.
We at Flatlandia want this to change. We don’t want to be writing about what freestyle is and why it is a non event in Australia. Instead, we want to be reporting on Aussies going to freestyle competitions, reviewing the latest drop of freestyle gear, or waxing lyrical about that kid who rolled past the other day, shouting ‘do a rail flip’.
So this is us, celebrating freestyle, bringing it back to Australia. We’re not sure where this project will take us, but we’re going to full send it anyway.
REFERENCES
- Gale T (2021), An Introduction to the UKFSA, UKFSA, accessed 13 February 2024
- Late Tricks (n.d.), Contests, Late Tricks, accessed 13 February 2024
- Mullen R and Mortimer S (2004) The Mutt: How to Skateboard and not Kill Yourself, 1st edn, HarperCollins Publishers, New York
- Skate Australia (n.d.) Skateboarding, skateaustralia.org.au, accessed 12 February 2024
- Transworld SKATEboarding (2002), Aussie Rules Skateboarding, skateboarding.com, accessed 18 February 2024