Skate star Poppy Starr Olsen ramps up her skills at home

Poppy Starr Olsen should have been getting ready for the Tokyo Games trials, instead she is some 7700km away carving up the ramp in her New­castle bedroom.

Olympic skateboarder Poppy Starr Olsen, watched by Millicent Ashley and her sister Kip, on her bedroom ramp. Picture: Peter Stoop

Right about now, Poppy Starr Olsen should have been getting ready to try to skateboard her way to Olympic gold. Instead, with the Tokyo Games firmly on hold, she is some 7700km away from Japan and carving up the ramp in her New­castle bedroom.

It’s all COVID-19’s fault and Olsen, like thousands of athletes across the world, is hanging out and hoping the Olympics will go ahead in one year’s time.

The prospective Olympic debutante says the whole event being postponed is “pretty annoying”.

“I was really looking forward to it,” Olsen says. “It was the first-time skateboarding was in the Olympics. I had all these other skating plans for after Tokyo, and that’s all been put on hold too. You are working towards something — and then you have to put another year of work in.”

As it has done for all potential Olympians, COVID-19 wreaked havoc with her training and international travel to overseas skateboarding competitions.

On top of that, with the skate parks shut in Newcastle when the pandemic hit, she had to think quickly. It was back then that she ­arranged for a ramp to be constructed in her bedroom.

“I’m lucky. I have that ramp in my room now. I can use it when the weather is not so good,” Olsen says. “It’s just really great.”

The 20-year-old would now have been skating the ramp at the Olympic venue of Ariake Urban Sports Park in Tokyo. But there is always Bar Beach skate park in Newcastle instead.

“Over the coming weeks, when I would I have been in Tokyo, I will now be skating at Bar Beach,” she says. “I’ve also been doing a lot art lately, because that’s what I do.”

Olsen has decorated the walls of her bedroom ramp with pieces of her artwork. “I’ve always loved trying out new stuff, mainly drawing,” she says.

If the Olympics do happen in a year’s time, and if COVID-19 is still raging, there is a possibility of no crowds at the Games.

Olsen admits that would be strange, considering the people that surround the bowl are a huge part of the skating competition. “I think that will be interesting, ­especially in skateboarding. The crowds are always crazy supportive in everything you do. If there are no crowds, it will definitely be strange,” she says.

For now, Olsen has one more year to wait to be part of an Olympics at which she desperately wants to represent her country.

“It has been annoying because it has been pushed back so far,” she says. “I would have been travelling a lot and seeing my friends, and that’s a big part of skating.”