Longboarder: Pete Connelly
Longboarding, the lesser known sibling of skateboarding, is one of the ultimate land-based extreme sports. Armed with only a board in hand and a hill underfoot, riders can reach dizzying speeds of over sixty miles per hour as they hurl through city and countryside, trying to keep control of their board with as much precision and artfulness as possible.
Although often packaged as a faster, more stable version of skateboarding, longboarding actually originated from the 1950’s surfing scene in Hawaii, much like its slower sibling did in California, all at a very similar time. When the rolling oceans were too flat to be surfed, lovers of the sport would take to the pavements on smaller surfboards with roller blade wheels attached to them instead, what they called Sidewalk Surfing. It gave the sport’s early proponents the opportunity to bring tricks and techniques usually reserved for the sea to the land, as well as develop a form of self-expression unique to longboarding. Of course, the thrill of hurtling down the side of one of the tropical island’s volcanos can’t have hurt either.
It was not until the 1990s that skateboard manufacturer Sector 9 began to mass-produce and sell longboards, which had stayed as a fairly underground phenomenon until then. It was then that they began to develop the characteristic polyurethane wheels and more stable trucks that make them such great modes of transportation, allowing people like Rob Thomson to skate from Switzerland to Shanghai, a record breaking journey totalling 7,555 miles. Their larger and heavier design makes it easy to ride over cracks in the road or pavement without the board getting stuck, adding a greater sense of seamless control than is offered by a more traditional skateboard. As such, longboarding has taken on a more journey-orientated culture, focused on the floating pilgrimage of unparalleled freedom that the many-terrain, all-weather boards offer.
Longboards are more about speed and control, of mastering the elegance of movement, than about performing tricks. Dancing takes the place of kickflips, where viral stars like Ko Hyojoo move about their board, incorporating spins and other moves whilst staying in absolute command of their movement. The same applies to the most popular iteration of the sport, downhill longboarding, in which people ride down hills at breakneck speeds without losing control. The record-holder for the fastest longboarder is Pete Connelly, who reached as astonishing 91 miles per hour in 2017. Longboarding, much like surfing, is an artistic expression of grace, alongside the rush of hurling through the grandeur of the world with only a thin board separating you from the ground below. It is about mastering control of the board and oneself, but more than anything, it is about the joy of the wind on your face as you explore the land before you.
