Skateboarding runs on the power of dreams. Every stop on the World Skateboarding Tour is inundated with registrations from skaters who just want a chance to show what they can do. Maybe some will advance and edge closer to their ultimate goal- whatever that may be; inevitably not all can, though. Some may get eliminated by better skateboarders from elsewhere in the world. Sometimes, they get hurt- because as well as being a dream factory, skateboarding is also a meat grinder.

All photos: Atiba Jefferson

Jazmin Alvarez

It can be absolutely brutal in a thousand different ways- from landing primo to wheelbite to seeing the board re-appear under your feet like a yappy dog just as you thought you were about to get your feet back on terra firma. Injuries in skateboarding are inevitable because it is impossible to progress in it without making every single mistake possible first. You only have to watch practice here in Paris to see top-flight professionals getting served up on tricks they seem to do in their sleep come competition time.

Incredible though the escape artistry often is, the sheer mathematics of probability mean you are going down eventually.

Front Smith

Let’s run a few numbers here to get a sense of what we are talking about. For simplicity’s sake, lets take the 360 kickflip, in which the board spins through 360 degrees both along its vertical and horizontal axes. Now, let’s say there is a generous 30-degree margin of error either side, so an over- or under-rotation of 30 degrees either on the flip or the shove-it might still be possible to land (and that is being really generous). That means that the statistical chance of you landing a 360 kickflip are 60x60 out of 360x360 which is 1 in 36. Any of those 35 other outcomes has the potential to see you picking up teeth with broken fingers.

To put it another way: the chances of you pulling an ace out of a deck of cards is 4 in 52 which is 1 in 13. The chances of that ace being red is half that, or 1 in 26. So you are statistically much more likely to pull a red ace at random out of a deck of playing cards than you are to land a 360 kickflip. And if you don’t get a red ace, nobody is going to smash your foot with a hammer.

Front Feeble

So that is just one- flatground- trick; a high-scoring 45-second run usually involves 8 tricks, plus 5 Best Tricks of which you have to make 2 to stand any chance of coming anywhere meaningful. So- minimum- you have to pull off a 1 in 36 miracle 10 times. Minimum. We haven’t mentioned handrails, hubbas, combos or anything else here.

So we can say that statistically injury and disappointment are inevitable in competitive skateboarding.

Why am I telling you this? Colombia’s Jazmin Alvarez, who has come up through the ranks of the IOC’s Youth Athlete Development programme all the way to the Paris Olympic Games, just blew out her knee in practice. Yes, skateboarding may well be a field of dreams, but it can be cruel too. Heartbreakingly so, sometimes.

Jazmin- from all of us at World Skate we hope the pain of your disappointment passes soon and you are back amongst it when the World Skateboarding Tour resumes.

Time is on your side, and you are already a star.

The numbers just didn’t line up this time, but there will be other times. Hold your head up high.