The Oldest Professional Female Skateboarder On Earth
In 1973, a 13-year-old girl in Santa Cruz, California hopped on a skateboard her brother Cary brought home from shop class and discovered she was not going to stop. Judi Oyama spent her teenage years skating pools, ramps, and backroads around Santa Cruz, commuted to her job at a skate shop on a board, competed in men's-only events because women's categories did not yet exist, and placed eighth in one of them as the only female competitor. By 1978 she had received some of the first sponsorships ever given to a woman in professional skateboarding and joined the Santa Cruz Skate team. Her most vivid memory from those years is skating downhill through three miles of warm California road the night before a competition with Tony Alva, keeping up with him the whole way while he gave her a big smile that she says encouraged her to keep riding for the rest of her life. She kept riding for more than 50 years. She is now 66 years old and holds the Guinness World Record as the oldest competitive skateboarder on Earth, a record she has held since 2024 and has broken repeatedly by simply continuing to compete.
Judi's racing helmet from the 1970s and 1980s is now in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution, and she was inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame in 2018. She goes to CrossFit four mornings a week at 6am, skates at the park on weekends, and tapers off in the week before a competition to let her body rest before race day. She also mentors young skaters, and one in particular has made this chapter of her career the most meaningful of all. When Leiola Kahaku was 15, her friend Mark brought her to a slalom practice with Judi. She loved it, bought a board, and kept training alongside her mentor for two years. Leiola is now 17 and the Women's Slalom Skateboard World Champion. Judi competed at the same race and placed third. She told Guinness that watching her mentee take the title was epic and one of the best memories in her career, and that she would not still be competing if she was not coaching her. She has qualified for the World Skate Games in Paraguay this October. She is featured on the cover of the Guinness World Records 2027 book. She said she always dreamed about being in the book but thought her time had come and passed. She was wrong about that. Her advice to anyone who has told themselves something similar: don't listen to the negative people, and wear a helmet.
