Is that a full team video?

It’s the majority of the team apart from those who have had stuff come out individually recently.

In terms of being a vert skater on a board company, is there a sense of detachment from the rest of the team who skate street?

I think the team as a whole is a real diverse group of people and we all have different crews that we skate with anyway. That makes it sick. The trips are cool though because we all get on so well and we get to skate together which doesn’t usually happen. It brings everyone together.

I know you were out in The States with CJ and Ryan [Gray] a while back too. I heard that trip was pretty intense.

Yeah it was from the go, I think it was because it was just the three of us.

Ryan said to ask about the mission to find Mount Baldy.

(Laughs), oh yeah. We had no idea where it was. We had an address but it turned out we just had an address of the mountain. It’s not that hard to find but we were kind of running out of daylight and had no idea where we were going. We were wandering around aimlessly. It was cool to eventually find it because it became a mission instead of someone just giving us the pin, which is kind of standard procedure these days – an actual ‘mission’ is pretty rare over in California.

What was it like to skate?

It was fun. It’s actually a lot smaller and tighter than it looks and it’s kind of crusty. There were some people skating it when we got there too. That’s actually how we found it in the end because we could hear them.

You were skating Bob Burnquist’s ramp on that trip too right?

Yeah, I’ve known Bob for a little bit through skating competitions but I hadn’t skated his ramp before then. It’s concrete vert bowl. It’s pretty amazing. I’d like a bit more time with that one as it gets easier the more you skate it and get the lines going.

I’ve always thought concrete would be much dodgier when it comes to slams.

I’ve seen some pretty horrible head smacks skating concrete but I like it as much as wood. Wood can sometimes be sketchier when it’s slippy. I always seem to hurt my wrists and ankles on wooden ramps. I’ve actually just done my knee quite badly so I’ll have to rest up for a bit.

What’s the worst slam you’ve ever seen?

Has to be Danny Way’s mega ramp slams at the X-Games.

Are there any trends in vert skating that you don’t like at the minute?

There are definitely tricks that will trend. I don’t know if I don’t like any though. Inverts are back in a big way and to me that’s sick. Air to disaster variations are pretty big at the minute too.

There’s a lot of debate about skateboarding going to the Olympics at the minute. You’ve said previously that it would be great for vert skating, as it’s already somewhat alienated.

It’s all come out pretty recently. Before I think I was just looking at the positive. I’m pretty sure it has been accepted. It’s not like I want it in there but if it is then I’m not going to sit around and complain about it. Street League came around and that has prepared skateboarding to be in the Olympics. If people get to enjoy skating that way then fair enough. Skateboarding is always going to be skateboarding whether there’s a corporate side or not.

I think the problem is that sometimes it seems there’s no concrete logic to the scoring.

There are definitely biases that go on.

I don’t understand gymnastics events in the Olympics but I get the impression that there is a more rigid technical structure to how it is scored.

It’s just very subjective with skating. If it was down to me I think I would be too biased. Maybe watching someone executing ten tricks in a row perfectly isn’t going to make you feel anything. Then someone just does the craziest looking ollie and it just appeals to you. That’s what gets me stoked on watching skating. When it makes you feel something or you get excited. The way people do things in skateboarding is really important to me. It’s not necessarily about what you do but how you do it. I don’t think there is a way to judge that and be completely objective. There needs a fairer way.  But then, if you don’t want to be judged then don’t enter. You’ll always be stitched up one way or another. Thankfully it’s not up to me, I’m not trying to be a judge or be in the Olympics.

Going back to your roots in Norfolk there wasn’t much to skate vert-wise.

Yeah, no ramps out here – we had to travel further out to Birmingham and Peterborough.

When did the interest in vert spark up for you?

I don’t really know because all I skated was flat at first, as daft as that may sound from today’s perspective. Then I started skating with Paul-Luc (Ronchetti) a lot and he skated a lot of tranny. Then he got into vert and so I got into it too. It wasn’t a conscious decision of, “this is what I’m going to do”. It was what was really fun and what we were doing. I didn’t just decide to be “a vert skater”. I did always like watching the tranny video parts more when I was younger so I guess you could say I was definitely always more drawn to transition.

You’re only 23 years old. Have you found yourself skating with older people over the years?

I definitely think I’ve always skated with people who are a lot older than me for the majority of the time. Other than Paul, the crew that got me into it were all older. But now there’s a real good mix and there’s a lot of younger kids really coming up.

Aside from access to vert ramps, why is there less interest in it than street in the UK?

I feel like there’s going to be another wave of kids skating vert in the UK in the next five years or so. I can see these kids getting better and they’re keen. There’s so much potential.