Skateboarding & the Olympics? Interview with Ryan Decenzo

While being on tour with an all-star team of DWINDLE we had the chance to talk with Ryan Decenzo about the controversial topic “Skateboarding & The Olympics“. We sat down with him after a demo session and had a nice interview. In the end, TJ Rogers and Tommy Sandoval also joined the conversation…

Ryan Decenzo | Gentsch

When this year’s Olympic Games in Rio started a team of riders that skate for companies of the Dwindle Distribution were touring Europe. On the first day of the tour, the guys got the news that will be on skaters’ minds for the next four years from time to time: Skateboarding will be part of the Olympics in 2020!

After talking about this issue with Chris Haslam you’ll now also get Ryan Decenzo’s thoughts about skateboarding at the Olympic Games. Unlike Chris Haslam, Ryan is also participating in the Street League Contest Series and hence more involved in the competitive process.

Click the single shots to scale them up!

Gentsch:
            Yo Ryan, can you see yourself skating in the Olympics in four years?

Decenzo:
            That’s a good question… honestly, my body is kinda… worked, hahaha. It’s been sixteen years now of just jumping and hucking myself down shit. Damn, when I think about it, I was already hucking down eight stair sets after I had been skating for two years. My body is well beaten and I have to see, in which condition it’s gonna be in four years. I am 30 now. so we will see…

Gentsch:
            I talked to Haslam about it earlier, do you think there will be teams in the Olympics?

Decenzo:
            I think it would be super cool if there would be teams, that’s the way they should do it. I think, they should have some Street League type of competition, where each rider gets a set amount of tries for a trick and generate a team score out of that. I think that would be funny.

Gentsch:
            Did you read the Jenkem magazine article about which type of skate-comps they should have?

Decenzo:
            Well, I am part of the Dime Score Homies Crew and I think they should do some funny ass shit in there. They should do like a “Highest Ollie out of a kicker”…

Gentsch:
            Haha, seriously?

Decenzo:
            Sure, that would just be fucking awesome. But obviously, that’s not gonna happen. They for sure will make some type of contest format, with like a one minute run, just like always… Street League Format with some Olympic type of judging.

Gentsch:
            Jenkem suggested Downhill Racing, Game of skate…

Decenzo:
            Oh, that would be fucking boring…

Gentsch:
            …Megaramp and Vert. That’s what they said could be the best disciplines to watch for people, that don’t have a clue about skateboarding. Would you agree?

Ryan Decenzo – FS Flip | Gentsch

“…if you wanna generalise skateboarding…if you really wanna make skateboarding look, what it really is, I think you should just be able to skate everything. “

“If a mega or a vert ramp is not accessible, that’s fine, but I still think you should be able to skate a little bit of tranny, you know!? Not just flat, like game of skate, nobody wants to watch that shit.”

Decenzo:
            I mean, if you want to separate skateboarding in all those giant disciplines, for the Olympics, well yeah, but if you wanna generalise skateboarding… if you really wanna make skateboarding look, what it really is, I think you should just be able to skate everything. If a mega or a vert ramp is not accessible, that’s fine, but I still think you should be able to skate a little bit of tranny, you know!? Not just flat, like game of skate, nobody wants to watch that shit.

Gentsch:
            I just think that would be easy to judge AND to understand for non-skating people, you know…

Decenzo:
            But then it’s like a game show, where you’re pulling cards and…I like the idea of the mega ramp, though… That would be cool because it’s exciting.

Gentsch:
            But then again people on the streets would have such a weird look at you on the street because they, if clueless, would say “look what those guys are doing, THAT´S skateboarding…“

Decenzo:
            It’s OK, we don’t get any love on the fucking street anyways, hahaha!

Gentsch:
            Like Haslam said: You win a gold medal and you go back to your hotel, skate the rail in front and get handcuffed for that…

Decenzo:
            Well yeah, skateboarding in comparison to pretty much ALL the other “sports” is completely different.

Gentsch:
            Would you think, there will be some totally unknown Chinese clones coming outta nowhere to the Olympics and start killing it?

Decenzo:
            Nah, I don’t think so. You can’t only get “that good” in a skatepark, you know what I mean? As only a skatepark kid, hell no, in skateboarding you gotta think “outside the box”, you know what I mean!?

You gotta be able to do something on something, that was not meant to be skated, that’s what skateboarding is all about. Doing shit, that’s not meant to be done.

No one was meant to take their board and slide down a fucking handrail, but then Mark Gonzales came and said “I want to do that shit” and just fucking did it! If you go to a skatepark, with all those rails that are meant to be slid, that’s completely different. When skateboarding, you should look at things that are NOT meant to be skated, you know?! Make things happening, that were not meant to happen. Do things, that nobody thought about before.

And only some people have that gift, and even those not even all the time, but… I mean, Mark Gonzales, Iam sure when he goes to the park, he is not always thinking about trying something nobody before thought about, but… at a certain point or moment, you might be really well warmed up and start feeling it and then you see something and think “I might be able to fly from here to there”. And that’s just how skating is and works. Some day, you come to a park and think “I can’t do anything today right here”, and the other day it’s like “I can fly over this by 10 times”! That is the way skateboarding get’s progressed, you know.

Gentsch:
            You jumped and flew quite some on the tour so far, though…

Decenzo:
            Dude, for me jumping so far was just jumping onto a ledge, or rail, like jumping up onto it. It’s easy for me just to jump down some stairs or whatever, but onto a ledge, THAT´S real jumping for me. Damn, I gotta get my body UP on that fucking ledge. To go down something, for me, that’s not jumping, that’just hucking. I can just scrape a SW FS Flip one inch of the ground hucking myself down something, that’s not jumping. But like doing a SW 180 5-0 grind onto a ledge, that’s jumping for me!

Dude, my fucking knees dude, I can’t jump on that fucking shit anymore! Get me something that’s gonna propel me into the air, onto that fucking ledge! I am gonna land on that shit in a fucking Blunt Stall and smoke a joint up there, hahaha!

For me, nowadays, when I get on my dirtbike, I can just fly, and it doesn’t take me any energy, haha… I mean, you still gotta hold onto the handlebar, but once I am in the air, I’m like “yeah dude”, hahaha!

Fuck, I just love that feeling of flying! Of any kind, no matter what – if it’s skating, snowboarding, dirt biking… joint smoking, hahaha!

I think, the best feeling in skating is catching your board! Any kind of catch! Because, you know, you can’t do that in motocross, or snowboarding, you basically can’t do that with ANYTHING else!

Gentsch:
            You mean like feeling your control about what you are doing!?

Decenzo:
            It’s like playing soccer at like 20 miles an hour, hahaha! You know what I mean, you are at high speed and then you score a goal and boom…! You know, like I said, it’s hard to make a comparison to any other activity, but… it just feels sooo good! It´s the best shit ever!

Even like grabbing your board, when it’s not stacked to your feet, even that feels good! Grabbing your board on a snowboard is like “why the fuck am I even grabbing?”, hahaha! “The thing is fucking attached to my feet, what am I even going for?” Just fucking skate and fucking bone that shit, hahaha! And if you suck, just get better, hahaha!

I do remember, I was sucking sooo hard on doing melon grabs! That was the only grab I could do, but I could only do a little bit of tweak. But I practised more and more and got a little bit of tweak more, and a little bit more and… all of a sudden, it starts looking better! And that’s why skating is so hard! It’s always a challenge!

Gentsch:
            When thinking about the Olympics again, what would you say about Haslam leading the Canadian team with the Canadian flag and everything into the stadium?

Decenzo:
            I think it would be fucking awesome! But, when I think about it again, or what people then again might think, “wait, skating is a fucking sport now”?!

TJ Rogers:
            It always has been a sport, in my eyes!

Decenzo:
            No, it’s never been a sport!

TJ Rogers:
            Well, not in that way, it’s always been some action kinda lifestyle, but…

Tommy Sandoval:
            I look at a sport like this…

TJ Rogers:
            I am not talking about it as a hockey or baseball team, but… I still think skateboarding IS some type of sport, in a sense…!

Tommy Sandoval:
            I think in sports, you have sportsmanship, where you support your team and teammates with the goal to win something! And, that’s not really what you do in skateboarding, you don’t win shit with your team…

TJ Rogers:
            Hey dude, ZERO fucking King of the Road, hahaha!

Tommy Sandoval:
            But, look at it like this: Is there ONE thing, that really defines skateboarding? Just look at vert and street and… how many types of football or basketball are there? And where is the fucking coach in skateboarding?

Decenzo:
            Yeah, skateboarding is no fucking sport! Even though it might get into the Olympics, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is a sport!

Tommy Sandoval:
            Exactly, where would you ever find something like “sportsmanship” in skateboarding? Just because there is not really that type of team.

Decenzo:
            Yeah, but you also have that same shit in skiing and snowboarding. Just think about Shawn White, he might just be competing against himself, just learning and having fun.

Tommy Sandoval:
            I know what you mean, but thinking about this word “sport” what sport doesn’t involve some type of competition? In the sense that, you get into that sport and you know from the first day, that there is some competition!? Skateboarding, you can get into that and never ever will have something to do with some competition! And therefore, for me, it’s not really a sport! Damn, there is a lot to debate here, hahaha!

Decenzo:
            There is a lot of Olympic sports though like skateboarding…! Hey, look at this, you could have an Olympic “Highest Ollie Contest”, why don’t they do that?! THAT would be sick! Flat ground highest Ollie, period, done!

We have 2016, just think about how high motherfuckers gonna jump in 2040!?! Damn, hahaha, I will be sitting at home, drink a beer and watch these motherfuckers ollie the new world record! Is that too much to ask for, hahaha?!

I mean, I know nobody wants to see skateboarding in the Olympics, but I do. I wanna see the Olympic highest fucking flat ground Ollie! Or, am I wrong? Nobody else here wants to see the highest flat ground Ollie? I think it would be fucking epic!

Gentsch:
            Alright Ryan, we will see what’s gonna happen! Thanks for the interview!

Decenzo:
            No worries – Thank you! Dinner is coming, Bon appetite!