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August 07 2024
Andy Macdonald: Andy Macdonald is at the Team GB Olympic House on a Saturday morning, wearing one of his two suits. This new suit doesn’t fit quite right—it’s too loose in the middle and the sleeves are too long. At 51, Macdonald feels a bit awkward in a suit. That’s not a knock on him, just the truth.
“Skateboarders only wear suits to weddings and funerals,” he jokes.
Macdonald is in a new setting and dressed for the occasion. As part of the Great Britain Olympic Team, he received a full kit: what to wear at the opening and closing ceremonies, lots of official Adidas gear, and a suit for formal events. Just in case the king invites him for tea.
"I don't really expect the king to invite me for tea, so I decided to wear a suit to this press event," says Macdonald. Macdonald's laugh lines are deep, an important part of a lifetime of having a good time. The suit, he says, is meant to be funny. It reflects all the illogical lines he had to cross to get here. He's old - born in July 1973 - in a sport often dominated by teenagers. He was a key figure in the early 2000s effort to make skateboarding an Olympic sport, long before his Team GB Skate teammates Sky Brown and Lola Tambling were even 16. Though born and raised in the United States, they now compete for England. They, one of the true originals of the sport, are about to land in an Olympic park just blocks from the Eiffel Tower and the Grand Palais.
Macdonald is aware of his age. He's asked about it every day. He's asked to recount a long, miserable list of brutal injuries. A personal wiki page of Broke This, Shattered That. He's asked about having an 18-year-old son competing with 16- and 17-year-olds.
But then Macdonald turns everything on its head.
Injuries? In 35 years of skating, he’s only had two major injuries: a broken ankle and a fractured kneecap. He's had a knee dislocated once and an ankle dislocated once. That's it. "Very lucky," he says.
And why should he feel weird? He's not old. He's just been at the skate park longer than everybody else, that's all.
"Think of it like this — I was around before the teenagers even started," says MacDonald. "I was there when they were just learning how to position their feet on the board." Chances are I taught them the first drop-in. Some of the first tricks they learned? Maybe I invented some of them. Or I was there when somebody else invented them."
Macdonald’s charm is unmistakable. In a sport filled with legends and lore, he stands out almost like a patron saint. You’ll see him on Wednesday during the men’s park prelims, in the fourth heat, for his fifth and final run. That’s Andrew Macdonald, representing Great Britain.
Well, sort of.
Macdonald grew up in the Boston area and got into skateboarding at a young age. His first ramp was a quarter pipe, 8 feet wide and 8 feet high, built from plans he found in a magazine. Despite being on the East Coast, he quickly made a name for himself and eventually moved to San Diego to dive deeper into the skateboarding world.
That's where the legend grew. At the same time "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater" was hitting shelves as a video game that everyone of a certain age remembers, Macdonald's own video game was being released for the PlayStation 1. "MTV Sports: Skateboarding Featuring Andy Macdonald" was a game that felt a lot like Pro Skater, complete with a soundtrack that totally nailed the vibe of the year 2000. System of a Down, Cypress Hill, Deftones, Pennywise, Goldfinger.
You might not remember Macdonald's version because Hawk's version was comically superior.
"It kind of disappeared into the ether," Macdonald says, laughing.
This was an era when skateboarding was hitting the mainstream, with the X Games introducing action sports to households everywhere. MacDonald was right at the heart of it. He was involved in the Olympic skating movement, which began around 2003 or 2004, when NBC took over the Olympic broadcast rights. He became a founding board member of USA Skateboarding, not out of a desire to become an Olympian, but simply because "I wanted to be involved as our sport progressed in that direction."
The sport will have to wait until Tokyo 2020 to finally get going.
Macdonald watched those Games from afar, watching a long line of friends get their Olympic moment, although the atmosphere was less than impressive because of the pandemic. After the Games, he heard story after story about what it was like to be an Olympian. Amelia Brodka, an American skater with parents from Poland who competed in Tokyo under the Polish flag, suggested Macdonald consider his options.
As it turns out, Andy’s father, Roderick Macdonald, was born in Luton, England, about 30 miles north of London.
Macdonald therefore considered obtaining a British passport. He then considered Paris in 2024. Just before turning fifty-one years old in July of last year, Macdonald survived the Olympic Qualifier Series in Budapest. He said, "By the grace of God."
Now he is here, ready to compete in a competition led by 21-year-old Australian Keegan Palmer. The leading American competitor is 17-year-old Gavin Bottger.
Skill-wise, MacDonald is one of the best skaters in the world. Physically, things are a little different.
"They take a hard hit on the cement and get back on their feet," he says of his teenage rivals. "They’ll ask, 'Where are we skating this afternoon?' and I’ll tell them, 'I’ve got to pick up my kids from school.' Like, skating is over here for me today.'"
MacDonald has been leaping into the air and landing on his feet or knees since 1990. He has avoided major injuries, but he has not defied time. His body is 51 years old. The cartilage is calcified. The ankles are worn out. The knees are worn out. The lower back is injured.
His contemporary coach. British national team coach Sam Beckett has had a long career in the vert and park disciplines. He and MacDonald have a long relationship, mainly because MacDonald was Beckett's cabin counselor at the annual Woodward Camp near State College, Pennsylvania.
As you can see, Macdonald is 19 years Beckett's senior. That's the result of being a living, breathing historical document.
"This week, he mentioned, 'The last time I was here was 16 years ago, doing a demo with Tony Hawk at the Grand Palais.' "There were about 5,000 people in the Grand Palais, and Tony did a 900m, which definitely rocked the house.
"But that wasn’t the last bit. He grabbed the mic and said, 'Now, watch Lyn-Z Adams hit the first-ever women’s 540!' Then she came and did the first women's 540m, also in the Grand Palais. So that's a little Parisian skateboard history for you."
There's more to come Wednesday. MacDonald, who Hawk says is "a great example of how beneficial discipline can be," will get a foreword to his story.
It's a story all young people might someday tell.
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