There have been many unsuccessful attempts made down the years to draw parallels between skateboarding and who-knows-what other activity in order to try and de-mystify the allure. None of them work because nothing is like skateboarding, and that is the allure in itself.

With that said, there is one aspect of skateboarding which has parallels with three other activities that also share the air-quote “bunny ears” around the notion of what constitutes an athlete.

All photography: Atiba Jefferson

Matt Berger, flip back lip.

While there is an athletic quality to some skateboarding, the fact is that some of the greatest exponents of the craft have been as far away from what we conventionally consider athletes as it is possible to be without actually falling over.

Tom Penny is widely considered to be the ne plus ultra of style in skateboarding- and if that guy has ever seen the inside of a gymnasium, it has only ever been on TV.

Poe Pinson, front crook.

In that respect, skateboarding shares a quality with the sports of golf, snooker and darts in one important regard: once you have mastered the physics, then the game is largely mental.

Professional golfer John Daly is not exactly cut from the same cloth as Usain Bolt, nor are many of the top darts professionals dominating their sport today. Mentally, however, they are each able to lock into something which is unteachable and electric.

Vincent Milou, frontside flip.

In darts, the equivalent of a golfing hole-in-one, or a 147 break in snooker, is called a 9-dart finish. The act of getting from a 501 start down to zero in just nine darts is something which most professional darts players can do for fun while pounding garage beers with the broskis of an evening.

Come competition time, however, the nerves and the sweaty palms and the overthinking all come into play and as a result 9-dart finishes are about as rare as a hole-in-one in golf or a 147 break in snooker.

Respect is a two-way street.

The interesting thing about practice in professional skateboarding contests is that nobody is actually learning something new out there. The geometry of the FOP has been studied, replicated and practiced upon in advance. What practice becomes about, then, is finding a groove- and staying in it.

Chloe Covell, front feeble

Here at the Paris Olympic Games, there is ample practice time. The amount of it, in fact, becomes a groove management endeavour. Each discipline is offered two hours of daily practice and it is fascinating to see who uses all of it, and who uses just enough to get their groove right and then dip before they get tangled up in an easy trick and start overthinking.

Golfers know this condition as ‘the yips’- Rory McIlroy’s recent challenges with the kind of short putts you or I could tap in with a dustbin are but one example.

Keet Oldenbeuving, Rayssa Leal and Gabriela Mazetto

In skateboarding, where so much is done with the lightest of touches and with feeling employed as much as sight, it can induce the kind of meltdowns that led to former professional Kerry Getz becoming known as ‘hockey temper’ because of the number of boards he smashed up, lost in the mental game.

Gio Vianna, heelflip front blunt like whoa.

In practice so far this week, we have seen veterans returning to a groove of form that has eluded them thus far, and hungry youngsters struggling with their go-to tricks. Who will find their groove for the weekend- and stay in it?

Aurelien Giraud, back lip

That single great unknowable is precisely what makes skateboarding such a compelling, frustrating, magical spectacle.

The weekend is incoming: Paris 2024 Skateboard Street is ON.

Lock down your aerials!