51-Year-Old Skateboarder Competes at Paris 2024 Olympics — and Gets Standing Ovation from Tony Hawk

Andy Macdonald was already a skateboarding veteran, with over 20 X Games gold medals, before he stepped into the Place de la Concorde on Wednesday

Skateboarder Andy Macdonald competed in another Summer Olympics in Paris this year — and at 51 years old, he is also wrapping up his last.

On Wednesday, Aug. 7, the British-American who was competing for Great Britain in the summer games, went last in the men's skateboarding park preliminary round as the oldest-ever skateboarder to compete in the Games, Olympics.com reported, with over 30 years on some of the younger competitors in the sport.

Although he eventually placed 18th out of the 22 men in his heat with a score of 77.66 and didn't medal, Macdonald was still a crowd favorite at the Place de la Concorde. According to the Associated Press, he got screams and cheers from the crowd when he finished his performance on Wednesday with a backflip. He even got a standing ovation from his longtime friend and skateboarding icon Tony Hawk after completing the move.

"I did that for the crowd and it was just about getting to experience and represent for skateboarding," Macdonald told AP of what he dubbed his "one big trick." He added, "I was trying to represent like, 'Hey, this is fun no matter what age you are.' This is like the coolest, funnest, most inclusive thing that you can do."

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Macdonald is considered a veteran of the sport, beginning his professional career in 1994 and winning 23 X Games gold medals in vert skating, per AP. He told the outlet that one of the best parts of the day wasn't just competing at his second Olympian (he also made an appearance in Tokyo), but skating in front of his mom, who hadn't seen him compete in nearly 30 years.

“My mom’s accepted that I’m an Olympian and a skateboarder at the same time,” he joked. “So that’s my greatest accomplishment.”

"I could have fallen on every run and just be as happy as I am now. It doesn't matter," Macdonald added to the Olympics press team after his run. "It's just been the experience of a lifetime. The first few days I was here. I was getting like, four hours of sleep because I was up in the Olympic Village. I bought an electric skateboard so I was just zooming around, just like meeting everybody."

Hawk has showered his longtime friend with compliments since the beginning of the Games, and Macdonald even recalled how he and his fellow pro skater have even competed at the Grand Palais — over 10 years before the 2024 Olympics.

"Right over there, at the Grand Palais, Tony Hawk and I did a demo, and my son, who's 18, was just a toddler. He fell asleep during the demo," Macdonald told Olympics.com. "For Tony and mine's generation, skateboarding was the antithesis of Olympic sport. And we became skateboarders because we didn't want organized sport."

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"We didn't want to play football or soccer. We're the outcasts," Macdonald continued. "We're over here skateboarding, you know? Like football players hate us. And now we're just being embraced, as you can see by this community, this global sports community. And it's just amazing."

The skater, who ended up Olympic run after his performance on Wednesday, told AP that simply having fun was one of his top priorities at the games.

"I did that for the crowd and it was just about getting to experience and represent for skateboarding," Macdonald told the outlet, referring to his final backflip. "I was trying to represent like, ‘hey, this is fun no matter what age you are.’ This is like the coolest, funnest, most inclusive thing that you can do."

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