Middle-aged spread: Skateboarders over 40 still rolling

Riding a skateboard with silver hair, laughter lines or a dad bod shouldn’t prompt stares – but sometimes it does.

“Look mum, that’s an old man skateboarding!”

That was the experience of Rob Cherry, one of a number of Kiwis who skate, surf or snowboard in their 40s and 50s.

Cherry, 57, was in his 40s when he overheard those words ring out from a toddler walking with her mother.

READ MORE:
* Old gold: How action sports athletes are challenging age stereotypes
* Far from Olympic glory, middle-aged skateboarding hurts so good
* 76-year-old Timaru skate boarder told to grow up

“I was feeling good about myself”, he said, “then I came back down to Earth.”

The jibe didn’t stop Cherry though. He recently traded up from his manual skateboard to an electric one, as a fun occasional mode of transport.

And he’s not alone.

University of Canterbury health lecturer Dr Nick Maitland has been a skateboarder since the mid 1980s, immersed in its culture, but he said as he got older “there was an undeniable feeling of isolation at the skate park”.

“I couldn’t stop noticing any more that there didn’t seem to be anyone else like me.”

The feeling of suddenly not being “part of the herd” prompted him to take on a “passion project” to research the experiences of 12 over 40s who skateboard, surf and snowboard – activities, he said “generally seen as youth sports”.

“What are the experiences of people who still do them and why, and how’s it changed?”

Maitland said people “connect to these sports when they’re young because they’re looking for something with freedom, and they want to get away from structure, expectation, measurements, and parents”.

“Skate parks, oceans and mountains, they’re still the same thing, they’re an ability to get away from structured life and its expectation, so they become these safe havens.”

But when it came to injuries with middle-aged bones and joints, “there is no lonelier place on earth than the bottom of a bowl when you’ve had a big slam”.

“I had a slam at a skate park two weekends ago, and if the pain wasn’t bad enough, the 12-year-old kid on a scooter yelling, ‘Hey mister are you okay?’ makes it way worse – and you feel your age.”

Over 40, he said significant injury wasn’t just about the physical recovery, it affected work, the ability to parent and be a supportive partner, “everything’s affected”.

Cherry said he loves his electric skateboard, often cruising around Wellington’s bays into town from his home.

“The joy of it for me is it’s like surfing on a wave that just never ends.”

He has been skateboarding most of his life, but when he saw someone on an electric skateboard he thought, “S… that looks like fun”.

“I feel good about it, even though I got hit by a car. I love it.”

Late last year Cherry was “so blissed out” riding on the streets.

“I thought, this is the best thing I ever bought myself in my whole life. Five minutes later I was unconscious on the road.”

He had been hit by a car while travelling over a pedestrian crossing which saw him knocked out and his shoulder damaged.

What followed was a month off work as an art installer from the injury.

But he’s back on his preferred ride, being “just a bit more careful now”.

“I want to keep doing it as long as I can.”

Maitland will be sharing his findings at a University of Canterbury free public talk on May 10 to discuss how these lifestyle sports continue to provide meaning in middle age, as a source of excitement, an effective means of coping with stress and contributor towards positive wellbeing.

Speaking from personal experience and the people he interviewed, he said you can’t get that “sense of enjoyment and of identity anywhere else.”

“They don’t want to be without it.”