Skateboard star Oskar Rozenberg wants to create change

He was nine years old when he cycled past Stapelbäddsparken in Malmö by chance.

15 years later, Oskar Rozenberg is one of the world’s foremost skateboarders, and it was here – on 1,800 square meters of concrete – that it all once began.

To call him unknown is a truth with modification.

The 24-year-old got his first heavy sponsors already as a teenager, signed a contract with Nike when he was 16 and will go to skateboarding’s first Olympics as one of Sweden’s big medal jumps.

But at the same time, he can go under the radar.

– Who is he? asks a guy in jogging clothes when construction workers, children on summer vacation and office people stop and watch today’s training in Västra hamnen.

– Glad he was here, is that Oskar his name? says another.

He is called “Oski”, is a double world champion (2017 and 2019) and will compete in the skateboard discipline called park in Tokyo.

He has recharged at home, in what he calls “the world’s best skate park”.

Here, one of the world’s best skiers is crowded with children who may have just received the first board of their lives.

– That’s what’s a little special about skaters, that you train in the same places. It’s damn unique, says Oskar Rozenberg.

– You sometimes notice when you meet younger people who look up to you that they sometimes do not know what to say, which is a bit fun. Because I remember myself when I was their age and met someone I looked up to, then you were a bit the same, a bit shaky.

– Nowadays when I go around in skate parks in Sweden, people mostly recognize me. But it can also be nice that not everyone knows who I am.

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This morning’s workout is over and “Oski” has found the only shady place next to the hot concrete pits in Stapelbäddsparken. For almost two hours he has worn trick after trick in the scorching sun.

What does this place mean to you?

– This is where I started skating in 2006, when I was nine years old, he says when he settled down with some water.

He continues about that bike ride with his dad, the day he found his way into the skateboard:

– We came across some friends that I did not know very well then. But they were very welcoming and I got to test their boards. I was here every day for several years, and made a whole new circle of friends.

– I did not really feel that I had had it before, at school and so on. I felt that I was a little outside, I did not like school so much and had a lot of migraines, was completely stressed at school. But when I started skating, I met so many friends.

I was here every day for several years, and made a whole new circle of friends.

What was it about skateboarding that you got hooked on?

– From the beginning, it was mostly just the feeling of going, going down a ramp and just feeling the wind and the freedom, the soft feeling that it feels like you are gliding in the air. That is the absolute first thing I remember, Oskar Rozenberg remembers.

– The second was the whole affair, everything that came with skating. It was a whole new world that opened up.

How?

– I got to hang out with people who were much older than me and I got to see Malmö in a completely different way. I got to see people who had abused alcohol and drugs, and people who were a little older than me who started talking about brides and stuff like that when I was very young. So it was a bit interesting to observe the whole – what to say – reality that was going on around the skate park. While I only focused on skating, I could see both good and bad examples of what people do when they get older.

It was a whole new, uncensored world that opened up.

– I think it helped me a little to see type “aha, this guy is five years older than me, now he has ended up in addiction”. Then you could say “okay, I do not want to go that way”. Or I could see “this guy is ten years older than me and he is a skate professional now”. It was a completely new, uncensored world that opened up, which you were not allowed to see at school or at a football training – there I only trained with those who were my age.

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He was doing football, hockey and even breakdance on the side.

But in skateboarding culture, he found something different than in traditional sports.

– This is more open to everyone. You get to meet all types of people, at all ages, at all levels of riding, and people who come from different places in the city and with different conditions. I think that is very useful.

When did you feel you had talent?

– I think I discovered it quite immediately. After just one week, I noticed that others thought I was good.

– It was fun, but it was not until several years later that I reflected on what it means to be good and what I could use it for. It was more when I started getting sponsors, when I was much older, that I started to think I could live on this.

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Your own way into the sport is what made Oskar Rozenberg now start to think about how he himself can contribute to similar opportunities for today’s young people.

After talks with the American skateboard legend and idol Tony Hawk, an idea was born to put his name on new skate parks around Sweden.

Hawk has a foundation that builds parks in the United States.

– He said that they could not do it in Europe due to certain laws, that a European organization was needed for it. And then I started to think that it would have been interesting to do something similar here, says “Oski”.

Along with his agent Kristoffer Hansson and national team coach John Magnusson, he wants to create a new organization that will build new skate parks, or help finance parts of these, in Swedish cities.

– We have just started, but it is a project that I am passionate about, says “Oski” about the hunt for sponsors and construction plans.

– It can be skate parks in the middle of the city, like this one, or in a more exposed area, like maybe Rosengård.

Why are more skate parks needed?

– Because a skate park feels like the best playground you can have in a city. Not just for children but for everyone.

– I have seen so many times how a skate park can really change people’s lives and destinies. Take myself as an example, I do not know what I would have done if I had not skated.

– The opposite is that if you grow up in a place where there is not much to do, then maybe you are drawn to the wrong stuff.

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The commitment of the world star stands out. Not least when the Olympic debut is only a few weeks away.

At the same time, it’s nice to have something besides competition and results, says Oskar Rozenberg.

– When you are an athlete, it becomes quite egocentric sometimes, you focus a lot on yourself and how you feel, your own performance. There will be little tunnel vision. So it can be good to step out of it sometimes, for its own sake to get a little more perspective.

Skateboarders are nor is it necessarily particularly focused on results, “such as perhaps skiers or many from other sports”, the Olympic hope continues.

Ahead of the sport’s historic Olympic debut, there has been a discussion about whether entering the Olympics is even a good way to go. That is it, is the Swede’s opinion. A medal would be “pig-like”, he says, but also notes that the Olympics “are not the coolest thing about skateboarding”.

– When you start skating, it’s not about competing, it’s not the format that skateboard is built on. It’s more that you skate with your friends, try to be creative in your riding, develop your own style and develop yourself.

– You can also compete in skateboarding, of course, but it’s not like in football, for example – where almost everything is about shooting the ball into the goal.

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