Military skateboarders put on impressive show as sport seeks official recognition
Military personnel have taken part in the third-ever Inter Services Skateboarding Championships in Portsmouth in the latest push to get the sport officially recognised across the UK's Armed Forces.
Skateboarding, long regarded as a fun recreational activity, has recently gained recognition as a competitive sport since it made its first appearance at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo 2020.
Since then, skateboarding has seen an uptick in participation, including in the Armed Forces.
At the Inter Services championships, competitors complete a 45-second run across a skate park, which is designed to resemble an urban environment, including stairs, rails and gaps.
They are judged based on their most impressive skills, meeting several criteria including difficulty, speed, execution and style.
The top six in the preliminary round would advance and compete in the final for the top honours.
REME soldier Sergeant Thomas Moran won the overall championship title, displaying an impressive range of tricks and skills, matched with brilliant execution.
After three successful Inter Services championships, Sgt Moran hopes more serving personnel get involved in the sport, saying that it holds "a lot of qualities" which would benefit the military.
He said: "I think [skateboarding] has a lot of qualities that the military needs like mental fitness, people are determined, all of the attributes that we look for in soldiers, really."
Speaking about the growth of skateboarding in the Armed Forces, he added: "Our big vision is that we get the same funding as other sports and that, eventually, it becomes the same sort of standardisation in that we have competitive people that have joined the Army because they want to skate, but also that extra mental resilience that we want out of our soldiers."
The Royal Navy hosted this year's championships at Pitt Street Skate Park in Portsmouth.
Petty Officer Andy Sparks, chairman of the RNRM Skateboarding Association, says he wants to reach out to skateboarders across the military who "still don't know" that skateboarding is a thing in the UK Armed Forces.
He said: "In terms of having skateboarding recognised as an official Armed Forces sport, we are eating the elephant bite by bite.
"We are putting out the representation and we are putting our names out there and getting recognised and trying to get more people involved because there are skateboarders out there who don't know that this is a thing.
"There are still quite a lot of steps that we need to take to get it recognised as an official sport, but we really believe that we're going to get there."
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