"The teacher told me: 'Let's see when you mature!'"

Why can't I arrive with the board and hang myself?.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
25 September 2022 Sunday 20:44
6 Reads
"The teacher told me: 'Let's see when you mature!'"

Why can't I arrive with the board and hang myself?

They call him Bodhi

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“I was nine years old when I looked out the window of the house and discovered that they were building something down there,” Danny León (27) tells me.

– And what did they build?

-Where before there had been a vacant lot with a soccer field, now they were digging a hole and then banked it. At first I thought it was going to be a pool. In fact, one day I sneaked into the construction site and slid down the slope on my ass, as if it were a slide. Then I found out it was going to be a skatepark. What a gift!

-Why?

-Kids began to arrive from Móstoles, from all over Madrid, and they gathered down there. They did tricks, turns. I loved. A month later I went down with my friend Juanan. We were children, we did not dare to enter. We would stop to watch from the fence and one day Elis, an older skater, told us: 'Come in, kids.

And they passed...

We didn't have a scooter or anything. When the older ones rested, they left us one of their own and we tried things. We did that to enjoy, eh? I didn't think it would end up being what it has been for me.

What it has ended up being: Today, Danny León is a professional skater, under payroll at Red Bull. And thousands of Internet users follow him on the networks. And a year ago he was an Olympian in Tokyo 2020 (in the debut of the discipline in the Games he was ninth). And today he himself competes in the Red Bull Drop In Tour, in the Ágora space in Badalona, ​​together with the best specialists in the world (from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.).

"Well, yes: that soon accelerated," he tells me now.

Under the cap, he wears a ponytail and mustache, his watermark.

–¿...?

–Juanan's mother bought him a horrible skateboard, with the face of Bart Simpson, a supermarket skateboard. With that we shot. And after a month, our skate buddies started giving us the pieces they had left over. A board, wheels, trucks... They gave me some shoes that fit me in three big sizes. I tied my laces tight so the sneakers wouldn't fly off. And my father (Welcome) told me: 'Don't upset your mother'.

–¿...?

-My mother (Mónica) had a back problem, she was in bed. She didn't know that she was going down to skate because she couldn't see me from the window. Does she know how she found out she was skating?

– Say, say.

-A month I signed up for a championship in that place. I didn't have my own skateboard, so I asked the speaker. He called my name himself. My mother heard it from her bed, she sat up and watched me skate. She shouted: 'That's my son!' She was very involved.

-In what sense?

–Six months later they opened a skate shop in Móstoles. It was called Adrenaline. They came and offered to sponsor a few of us, as well as Juanan and me. They gave us material. And I was growing as a skater and at the age of 16 he already paid me for my things. Until then, my mother had been giving me a payment of five euros. And I told him: 'I'll pay myself'. And she, who is a technician in an environmental laboratory, taught me how to manage my money. If she earned 100 euros in a month, she told me: 'You have 20 for yourself and a little more for the subway pass. The rest you keep. And if you get injured, you spend it on the doctor. And that's how I learned finance. At 18, he was already a professional skater.

–And the studies?

–I finished ESO at the French Lyceum and took recording and photography courses. But at school they didn't make it easy for me.

-Why?

Some teachers didn't help me. Sometimes I had to travel to a World Championship and when I asked for an exam to be postponed, they told me: 'Let's see when you mature, skateboarding won't save your life...'.

-How wrong they were!

-Skate is my life. At night, sometimes I dream of movement. Sophie, my girlfriend, says that she notices her because I move my leg. That's how I dreamed up a McTwist. Do you want to know what she is?

And he takes out his cell phone and shows me a video, and on YouTube I see him executing a forward somersault with a 180º turn.

Now I'll show it to the kids. There is a boy from the Basque Country who is very good. His name is Peio González. He is 14 years old. I've had him at home for a while and I take him skating and teaching him tricks.