Alexis Sablone Aims to Skateboard Her Way Into the Olympics

Skateboarding outdoors the Brooklyn townhouse she shares with 5 roommates, Alexis Sablone soars by a shaft of January gentle together with her hoodie pulled over a beanie, her five-foot-four body swimming in saggy denims. A seven-time X Video games medalist, her motion is easy.

But Sablone, 33, is extra than simply one of many world’s finest ladies’s avenue skaters. She has a grasp’s diploma in structure from MIT. She designed a skateable public sculpture in Sweden, and is in talks for comparable initiatives within the U.S. In a studio, she builds large-scale sculptures with discovered supplies; at house, she designs decks as artwork director for WKND Skateboards and is engaged on a graphic novel about nuclear waste.

Today, it’s skateboarding that takes up most of her time. Sablone is near qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics, the place the game is making its premiere in August. Whereas she’s presently ranked second in U.S. ladies’s avenue skating. “It’s humorous, as a result of skateboarding at all times represented freedom,” she says. “Faculty was construction. And proper now skateboarding is so structured.” 

Rising up in southern Connecticut, Sablone bought her first skateboard when she was 10, after seeing a boy land a trick in a pizza restaurant’s car parking zone. She was drawn to the simple technique, the place repetition bought outcomes. “You set within the effort, you see issues altering,” she says. “There’s at all times one thing you’re engaged on.” 

Trevor Thompson, a professional skater and Sablone’s finest pal since childhood, says her reserved demeanor and gutsy model work in tandem. “She’s small and never very loud, so if you see her in motion, there’s one thing in regards to the distinction that strikes you.” As youngsters, “she’d be skating higher than you, falling more durable than you. What are you gonna say?”

In grad college, Sablone confirmed comparable dedication. “She was recognized for working all hours of the day and night time,” says Skylar Tibbits, an affiliate professor at MIT. It was there that Sablone was impressed to attempt sculpture. “An enormous a part of structure college is utilizing completely different instruments to make bizarre stuff,” Sablone says. “However in structure, ideally we wish to have the ability to re-create it. [After graduation] it was thrilling that I might nonetheless make stuff however not have that limitation. I used to be like, ‘I could make something!’ ” In a sure sense, she says, all of the disciplines overlap: skateboarding, artwork, design, structure. “You’re creating guidelines as you go, making one thing from scratch, and attempting to think about one thing that wasn’t there earlier than.”

For a very long time, constructing a profession in skateboarding was robust for girls. “That’s why I bought into competitions within the first place,” she says. “There wasn’t actually the opposite avenue to make a residing.” Even in contests, prize cash was typically vastly unequal. The X Video games started awarding equal prizes in 2008, following a threatened boycott by ladies skate boarders. Earlier than that, in 2004, males received $50,000 for first place and women received $2,000.

However within the lead-up to the Olympics, ladies have seen elevated visibility. In 2014, Nike signed Leticia Bufoni; in 2017, Adidas signed Nora Vasconcellos. Final yr, Sablone landed a sponsorship with Converse and designed a shoe together with her identify on it. Shortly after, Sablone, who’s homosexual, appeared in a Fiftieth-anniversary Satisfaction marketing campaign. Having a platform as a queer athlete is one thing she’s nonetheless adjusting to. “It’s solely been within the final couple of years that I’ve gotten extra protection and extra of a chance to speak about it,” she says. A 2019 interview within the skateboarding journal Thrasher was one of many first instances she spoke publicly about her sexuality. “Skateboarding is one thing that’s at all times been for everyone, not only one kind of individual. That’s the spirit of skateboarding,” she says. “However in observe, it appeared for years to be largely straight males, and that’s altering. To be a queer girl, it places you in some type of highlight.”

Sablone just lately bought again from a Workforce USA summit in Los Angeles, the place officers held an orientation for the 22-member nationwide staff, though solely 20 skate boarders from the entire world will compete in Sablone’s occasion. It made it really feel actual — nearly too actual. “We discovered loads of specifics, just like the day of the Olympics, your observe is at 7 a.m. and the competition is at 9 a.m. — I don’t need to give it some thought but,” she says. “I get so nervous simply in common competitors, eager about the Olympics offers me, like, a roller-coaster-ride feeling. Simply instantaneous adrenaline.”

As she prepares herself for the ultimate months of qualifiers, Sablone is already looking forward to the opposite aspect of this milestone — a schedule with room for her subsequent challenge. “It’s gonna really feel actually bizarre I believe,” she says. “However, then, in all probability thrilling to consider all that different stuff once more.”