The skating community is very fickle. And with me, they’re especially fickle for whatever reason. Maybe I bring it on myself, but if you don’t prove yourself and you don’t skate consistently, then they can very easily write you off and bring somebody from behind you and put them in your place.
We just want to make really great-looking clothes that are well-made, fit well… that you can skate in.
I definitely tried to skateboard in middle school, and being from San Diego, surf and skate culture is a big, prevalent thing. But I was not that good – I was kind of a chubby kid and didn’t totally master skating.
I want to be the top man in our sport. I want to be that guy everyone wants to see skate.
I would skate in the ’80s. I started skating with Jordan 1s, and that was a big deal. I looked different, because no one was getting with Jordan 1s. That became my little thing. I grew up in Hollywood.
In Ohio, I built the world’s first skate plaza.
I was really a spoiled brat when I was a kid skating. Meals are cooked for you, you are driven to the rink, they make costumes for you. Your parents sit around and watch admiringly while you skate. You don’t have to think about anything but skating. You’re just plain spoiled.
I grew up watching PRod and Chris Cole. To be able to skate with them in competition is an honor.
I trip walking down the stairs, but I can skate them probably.
‘Swan Lake’ was my favourite piece of music when I was younger, and I never had a chance to skate to it.
I have a scar on my left thigh, kind of almost near my knee. I essentially fell in the 2002 Olympics and when I hit the wall – because of the impact – my right leg kind of came in at like a knife-type angle and stabbed my leg with my own skate blade.
When I was younger, my mom worked at a roller rink, so I’d go all the time. I learned to skate pretty well. I won the limbo all the time.
I skate about 15 to 20 hours a week and also incorporate a lot of off-ice training. I take ballet and Pilates classes and lift weights with my physical therapist when I’m not on the ice.
I’m healthy enough to still skate, so I gotta go because growing up I didn’t have – I mean, I grew up in Montana so… there was kind of a little half-pipe in my yard, and that was the extent of the skate terrain in Montana. So I’ve got to go out and make up for lost time.
We’re so excited to skate in a Canadian market.
I love short track. I competed in short track, I was a world champion in 1986 but at that point in time it wasn’t in the Olympic Games so I moved into long track. Short track is a blast to skate and it’s a blast to watch.
I need to motivate myself to work hard because only I can skate my program.
Any eyes on me – a late-night street sweeper, some dude texting in his parked car, the homeless guy talking to himself – make me feel uncomfortable when I skate. Everyone expects me to do certain things.
When I know I’m not doing any auditions, I go to the skate park on my scooter or my bike.
All you have to do is drive by the empty tennis courts and basketball courts and compare them to the skate parks… c’mon people, get with the program – the future is now!
‘Wild Grinders’ becoming an animated series, and airing on Nicktoons is another one of my boyhood dreams come true. I came up with the name when I was eleven years old, when I needed a name for my first skate crew – who knew it would turn into such a mega brand?
There is no age, height, or weight requirement to skate. It is good exercise no matter what your age is. If you want to be competitive, most start young. But, I practice with many adult competitors.
For me, I skate as masculine as I can. I’m not a big strong guy. I’m not interested in fighting or throwing punches or balling my hands in fists all day. I’m not interested in guns, I’m not interested in football or stereotypically masculine things, so I’m going to skate in a fashion that is manly for Johnny Weir.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.
If you skate with an Olympic level skater, they make you so much better because you’re skating behind them, and you’re trying to imitate their stride and their stance. It’s like having the world’s greatest training wheels.
I literally tried every sport and was miserable. Soccer couldn’t hold my attention. I couldn’t figure skate. I’m afraid to swim. So I did dance for five years. It came a time where I was getting a little bit bored with it.
Hey, I’m like the Wayne Gretsky of the entertainment biz – I have other people do my dirty work while I skate around and get to be a nice guy. What can I say? I’m a coward.
We’d love to have a perfect scoresheet at the Olympic Games, but at the same time we always find we skate well when we think about our feeling and our performance, and just being connected to each other.
I found a great fishmonger in Southend, certainly not a place where I would have expected to find one, who specialises in skate knobs, a little nugget of meat from the head which makes for extremely agreeable eating.
For relaxation, I like to figure skate. Being on the ice and spinning and jumping, I feel very close to nature. In particular, I feel very close to Newton’s laws of motion. On the ice, you can experience Newton’s laws of motion in their purest, most elegant form.
So for me having that element of being able to be competitive wasn’t a problem. I’m very competitive. I thought if I could skate first, acting would come second. I could say my lines and then go do what I was saying. You don’t have to fake it, you’re not really acting.
Being surrounded by hockey, I got forced into it as a kid. I started skating when I was 4 and had a rink only 10 minutes from my home. In my town, we had one outdoor rink and one indoor rink, so you could skate all year long. I lived by a lake, too, so we did a lot of skating on the lake.
I had skate wing in London. I had mine grilled with lemon and herbs, and it was the perfect seasoning for that fish.
That’s another thing, we made up games. We didn’t have equipment. When it snowed, we would play slow motion tackle football. We would play hockey, but we wouldn’t skate. We just made things up. I loved doing that.
I love the fact that there is now a skate park in almost every city, but it will always have a rebellious/underground edge to it because it is based on individuality.
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