Team SkateFreestyle is a collection of hand picked skaters from 5 different nations. It is a union between the SkateFreestyle taught & coached skaters of the USA, UK, Netherlands, Belgium and Australia, and operates as a good old fashioned team. Thanks to the World Wide Web, they can all work together, sharing monthly progress via youtube, and laughing scornfully at each others skating *feel the love*. 

The ethos of the team is all about the fun of competition, and doing well in competition is merely a pretty damned convenient side effect…  Clicky clicky the pictures to find out more about each team rider (a couple more riders to be added):

Becoming a member of the SkateFreestyle team is certainly not a decision one takes lightly. Each day the team members wake up at 4am to begin their stretching exercises. An hour later the team eats breakfast, which consists of a small bowl of raw rice and a glass of tomato juice.

The team members then ritually chastise themselves with bamboo sticks - one for every cone they knock over. Often this takes many many hours…

Training begins in the temple courtyard at precisely 12 noon. The team ties their hands behind their backs to ensure they don’t get into bad habits. Unfortunately, this means they have to replace the cones with their mouths - their trade secret to ensuring sufficient knee-bend.

The day ends with a short swim of the sacred lake, 5000 lengths or so, for fitness. If they can complete these before the resident monk completes his meditation and rings the temple bell, then they are allowed to eat dinner.

JB is the one person on the team who hates competing. Infact, he’s the only person we know who temporarily resigned his sponsorship because he ‘couldn’t be arsed with competing’. He’s since been re-recruited as a non-competition rider… which… apparently makes you suddenly find competitions more bearable.

‘Why is he on the team then?’ we hear you ask, well, he’s the newly crowned British Champion, and he works for the officey & filmy side of SkateFreestyle as a day-job, so, despite not being coached by Naomi, or indeed, letting her offer him any more advice than he offers her during casual skating, he was begged to join, if only so he can take the videos at competitions…

Club: LondonSkaters Freestyle Club, UK Freestyle Skating Association

Competitions & Workshops:

• SkateLondon competition 2006
• Bremen competition 2006
• LSFC Demo Team 2006
• Paris Slalom World Cup competition 2007
• BattleUKII competition 2007
• No workshops… clearly…

Doug is pretty much the pioneer of freestyle slalom in the US of A. So it’s him you can blame. Wanting a bit of a fresh input into his skating, he organised the first US based Skatefreestyle clinic back in 2005, in his home town of Seattle. Had his wife been able to see the future, I think she would have objected…

Club: Skate Journeys, US Freestyle Skating Association

Competitions & Workshops:

• Seattle intro workshop 2005
• Seattle intermediate workshop 2006
• New York Seba & Naomi workshop 2007
• Seattle advanced workshop 2007
• BattleUS competition 2007

Denni, or Daniela/Denise/Delilah/Doris/Debbie as he is better known, is quite the character. Words fail when trying to give any kind of background on this guy.

Daniela is the all American guy. Pizza loving, baseball cap wearing, and his voice will drive you crazy during the first 5 minutes, before you rapidly acclimatise to his overwhelming enthusiasm for whatever is currently at hand. ‘YOU WANT US TO DO PRESSUPS TO WARM UP TODAY?? THAT’S SOOOOOO COOOOOOOOOL!!!!!!!!!!!’

Skating 14 years, Debbie travelled all the way from Massachusetts to impose himself on the first ever philadelphia SkateFreestyle workshop, and the rest is history.

Club: US Freestyle Skating Association

Competitions & Workshops:

• Philadelphia intro workshop 2006
• San Francisco advanced workshop 2006
• Boston advanced workshop 2007
• New York Seba & Naomi workshop 2007
• BattleUS competition September 2007

Tim’s, AKA Sch3lp, main contribution to the team is his incredible foot size. It’s certainly not his ability to remember his passport when travelling to international skate comps… will he ever live it down? We think not.

Fortunately, due to his 12 years skating, he’s the king of style when he prances around cones, and has an unnerving ability to do spitting image impersonations of people. Denni watch out… 

Club: ConeCrazy 

Competitions and workshops:

• ConeCrazy demo team 2007 
• Groningen advanced workshop 2007
• Bordeaux competition 2007
• Belgium advanced worskhop 2007
• BattleUK competition 2007, had he remembered his passport…