By Cara Waters
Ava Godfrey was just 12 when she set her sights on skateboarding in the Olympics.
“I was a lot younger, and I wasn’t scared of anything at all,” she said. “Everything was about skateboarding.”
Ava Godrey is one of the skateboarding stars of Queens of the Concrete. She is pictured with filmmaker Eliza Cox at Riverslide Skate Park in Melbourne.Credit: Wayne Taylor
While 14-year-old Australian skateboarder Arisa Trew triumphed with a gold medal in Paris, Godfrey, now 21, didn’t ever make it to the Olympics.
“I had pressure for sure, and it just didn’t become fun any more, after a while,” she said. “Pressure from myself and everyone involved wanting me to be the best. It was just too much to handle.”
Godfrey is one of three young women skateboarders who appear in the documentary Queens of Concrete, which premieres at the Melbourne International Film Festival this week.
Shot over seven years, including the lead-up to the Paris Olympics, the coming-of-age documentary follows the highs and lows of the trio pursuing their Olympic dreams.
The Age meets director Eliza Cox and Godfrey at Riverslide Skate Park on the Yarra River in Melbourne’s CBD.
The park is where some of the first scenes of the documentary were filmed, featuring Godfrey, Charlotte Heath (then nine) and Hayley Wilson (then 14).
“I was really little,” Godfrey laughs, reflecting on the film. “When you’re younger you’re not scared of breaking bones, now I’m like, ‘Hmmm’.”
Cox wanted to follow their journey towards the Tokyo Olympics and end the film six to 12 months after the games, but COVID meant it took longer than expected to complete the film.
Of the three, only Wilson made it to the Olympics, where she made history as Australia’s first female skateboarder in the street event. She now spends most of her time in front of a camera, skating and creating content for Nike.
“That was always the hope, that they would take three different paths so that we could convey that,” Cox said. “We didn’t want all three of them to go to the Olympics and win gold.”
The three girls grow up over the course of the documentary, grappling with puberty, and for Godfrey, the death of two friends.
“Your body changes [in puberty],” Cox said. “You’re carrying weight in different areas, your physiology, your hormones, kick in. You do become more scared, it’s a physiological thing and that’s why the progression [in skateboarding] is being driven by the young ones, because they don’t have that.”
Cox said she wants the documentary to show there is no one path to success.
“It’s about finding yourself and accepting, reconciling the journey that we’ve taken, the people we’ve become when life throws spanners at you and things that are beyond our control,” she said. “That’s OK – success comes in so many different forms.”
Godfrey now spends her time snowboarding and working as the skateboarding stunt double in the Netflix series Surviving Summer.
“I don’t compete any more, and I’m at ease with that,” she said. “I just skate with friends and just hang out and have fun.”
She watched the Paris Olympics on television and said she was amazed to see how far women’s skateboarding has come.
“There’s just so many girls [skating] now,” she said. “I think since the first Olympics [Tokyo], a lot of girls have got into it, seeing it on the biggest screens, seeing that they can do it. It’s not just a male-dominated sport any more, which is amazing. There’s so many girls out there just pushing it.”
While some sports have age restrictions, Godfrey does not think this should apply in skateboarding, and is happy to see young girls competing at the highest level – but she does have a word of warning.
“Don’t push yourself too hard and just make sure you’re enjoying what you’re doing.”
Queens of Concrete premieres at the Melbourne International Film Festival on August 18.
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