Skateboarding
Skateboarding
10 professional skateboarders you need to know about
Learn more about these 10 hugely-talented movers and shakers that are helping to shape skate culture in 2023 and beyond.
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Skateboarding is the activity that has come to define urban cool. Since its creation in 1960s California, skateboarding’s simplicity and accessibility has seen it flourish around the world. Through highs and lows of popularity, skateboarding has become a multi-billion dollar industry whose leading practitioners are famous throughout the world via the mediums of video, gaming and huge brand endorsements.
Meanwhile, 2021 saw skateboarding cross a huge cultural threshold when it debuted on the greatest athletic stage in the world in Tokyo, Japan. Today, skateboarding is one of the most influential youth movements of the new millennium. Here are 10 faces shaping that story today with the eyes of the world on them.
Discover what it means to be a pro skater in 2023 by watching the episode of Pushing Forward in the video player above.
01
TJ Rogers
TJ Rogers – Front Crook
© Sam McGuire
The very least that can be said about TJ Rogers – leaving aside everything else he has achieved in life – is that he's fully realised his skateboarding gift. He came up in skating the hardest way of all, letting his skating do the talking. Like every dreamer, he started out by shooting 'sponsor me' tapes on the freezing streets of Ontario in Canada. Now he lives in Los Angeles, skating every day and living his dream.
From a starting point of nowhere, he nurtured his talent and love for skating and never got distracted. His Switch Bigspin at Wallenberg and other markers he's left around California since his arrival are only part of the story of what makes Rogers who he is today. You can see how much he loves skating from the effervescence coming from the footage: he's living the skate life right. A lot of pro skaters take their foot off the gas as soon as they arrive. Never this guy.
02
Vincent Milou
Vincent Milou – Backside Smithgrind
© Clément Le Gall
A really remarkable story in many ways: France's Vincent Milou got into competitive skateboarding sideways as a pedigree street skater who was advised to turn his power and stickability to a contest and found he did well. He has risen through the competitive ranks from those warehouse contests to represent France among the best in the world.
Vincent’s fourth place at the Games in Tokyo may not have garnered him a medal but it has made him the most popular skateboarder in France, with crowds chanting his name in Paris later that summer.
03
Jamie Foy
Jamie Foy – Heelflip
© Anthony Acosta
You could say that Jamie Foy has walked the line to have the most indisputable pro career of the modern skateboarding era. There's a theory in skateboarding that with every generation that passes, the mantle of top pro becomes ever more precarious. As the baseline standard of skateboarding continues to rise everywhere all the time, there are more and more skaters jockeying for a relative handful of positions in the pro ranks.
Although he is instantly associated with being the absolute handrail maestro of skateboarding today, Foy's gnarliness is only part of his skateboarding makeup. Having already won every accolade skateboarding can bestow, and having done so with legitimacy in the streets and prowess on the contest circuit, he is flourishing like few others in skateboarding today.
04
Yuto Horigome
Yuto Horigome – Backside 360 Nosegrab
© Alexey Lapin
Arguably the most all-round gifted skateboarder in the world today, the Japanese multi-terrain sensation just inhabits another world of effortless grace. Yuto Horigome is a purist fan favourite because he hunts out new tricks in a genre which is already well-explored.
The outright winner of many contests over the last three years, including securing gold at the Games in Tokyo, nobody is doing video-ender tricks every time in contests like Horigome right now.
05
Angelo Caro
Angelo Caro - Indy Tweaker
© Gaston Francisco
In his first time outside of South America, Angelo Caro became Peru’s entrant for the 2015 Red Bull Skate Arcade final in Lisbon, where he was only beaten into second place by the narrowest of margins. This early foray into the international contest circuit was closely followed by an impressive third at the pivotal Tampa AM in 2018. His outright victory at 2019’s Mystic Cup in Prague put the global skate scene on notice of a gifted newcomer in their midst.
Peru’s first professional skateboarder, Caro secured fifth place in Tokyo, which was no small benchmark for a skater who was an unknown at the time of his first international contest back in 2015.
06
Aurelien Giraud
Aurelien Giraud – Treflip
© Teddy Morellec
How good is Aurelien Giraud? Stronger and faster than most of his peers, he also possesses the ability to hit the sweet spot between speed and power which can send tricks double their anticipated distance. At that point, however, the game becomes hanging on to the landing at motorcycle speeds.
At a single contest in the summer of 2021, Giraud broke not one but three boards, which for the expediency of time must be replaced in their entirety. Having been a close silver at World Street Skateboarding Rome 2022 he went one better to win the World Championship on his birthday at the start of 2023.
07
Jagger Eaton
Jagger Eaton – Switch Back Noseblunt
© Jake Darwen/World Skate
Arizona’s Jagger Eaton was the only skateboarder to enter both Street and Park at the 2022 World Championships, marking himself out as an unbelievable all-around skateboarding talent. Raised around skateboarding as his parents run the Kids That Rip skatepark, Eaton is possibly the most consistent skater in the world today and he is still bringing new tricks forward all the time.
2017 saw him win the Phoenix Am title as well as an X-Games gold, before 2018 arrived when he won Estonia’s Simple Session, an X-Games silver, placed third at the Vans Park Series in Huntington and finally an unprecedented Tampa Pro win, despite not having a pro board out at the time. With his newly-minted professional status cemented by a storming debut section for The Heart Supply in 2020, Eaton is an all-terrain dominator.
08
Ryan Sheckler
Ryan Sheckler – Tail Drop
© Kenji Haruta
Ryan Sheckler’s career transcends both skateboarding culture and skateboarding history as one of the most documented careers of all time. He won his first X Games gold in 2003, at the age of just 14, exploding his public persona. The name 'Sheckler' became synonymous with child prodigy, as the American was seen touring the world ollieing and kickflipping gaps that not even skaters twice his age were capable of skating.
One of the few capable of pushing the sport to new heights, Sheckler pushed the envelope of what a skateboarder can pursue off a skateboard. In 2020, he opened a private skatepark to 13 of the world’s best skaters for the Red Bull Solus contest, before releasing a one-two punch in the form of 2023's Lifer and Rolling Away video part and supporting documentary, in yet another hallmark to his illustrious career.
09
Gustavo Ribeiro
Gustavo Ribeiro - Heelflip
© Hugo Silva/Red Bull Content Pool
Portugal’s Gustavo Ribeiro might just be the hardest-working man in pro skateboarding today. Notwithstanding his prolific contest career up to and including his silver medal at the WST World Championships in the UAE in February 2022, he also filmed full video parts for his board, clothing and footwear sponsors as well as launched his own Youtube show ‘Mundo Gustavo’. Put simply, he's doing tricks nobody else can and with a consistency not normally associated with European skateboarding. All this, bear in mind, while rehabilitating a broken shoulder.
10
Nyjah Huston
Nyjah Huston – Kickflip Backside Tailslide
© Chris Whitaker
If competitive skateboarding had a focal point then it would be Nyjah Huston. As a childhood prodigy he, alongside Bastien Salabanzi, Paul Rodriguez and PJ Ladd, ushered in a new era of street skating which was hitherto considered only possible within the world of video games.
The international competitive skateboarding circuit at that time was in a relative doldrum, but in taking his ridiculous consistency and certain venom within his street skating power, Huston has become the most dominant contest skater of this new era. Remarkably, he's also come back from a recent injury hiatus stronger than ever.
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