Skateboarding has come a long way from the days of Bart Simpson and Tony Hawk video games – it’s now an Olympic sport with millions of Euros thrown at it.
For local skater Paul McMahon, however, he is treading a different board – the sport of longboarding.
A cousin of skateboarding, longboarding is a similarly niche sport that is poised for the mainstream, and Bayside man McMahon is the reigning European champion, having won the last two European competitions.
A longboard is longer than a skateboard, and in the sport, it’s more about the speed and distance than the trickery or flips associated with skateboarding.
Speaking to Northside People, McMahon, whom we previously interviewed in 2022, has revealed his latest escapades on the board and his reigning European glory.
McMahon is the first Irish person to successfully stay on their board for 24 hours, a feat he recently achieved at the Dutch Ultraskate, as well as winning the European title in the process.
McMahon revealed that he’s in it for the love of the game; a Bayside native, the 26-year-old said that he was driven to become the first Irish person to achieve the feat of staying on the board for 24 hours.
In his previous interview with Northside People, McMahon revealed he lasted for 21 hours in the 2022 event, before he was “taken out” by a rival skater.
In the last two years, he went for the full 24 hours, and achieved his dream.
But how does someone go from Bayside to a 24-hour non-stop skate session in the Netherlands?
McMahon revealed that it started on his family driveway, and the opening of the Clongriffin skate park in the late 2000s was his activation moment.
He said that Dublin City Centre is “skate-friendly,” and would often skate into the city centre at the weekends.
When longboarding entered the picture, he said the Dublin Mountains were the ideal way to practice.
In longboarding, where speed is important, he said he could reach speeds of up to 90 miles an hour while going downhill.
After attending DIT to study woodwork (“I learned how to build a longboard and got technical with it,” he explains), McMahon had his eyes set on the European crown; an endurance competition.
“I trained five days a week for six months,” he reveals, and on the day of, he said his friends and family flew out to support him, on hand to dispatch food and drink to McMahon while he was on his endurance skate.
Dividing his time between Ireland and the Netherlands (“to practice,” he explains, further elaborating that the Dutch cycle network has asphalt which is ideal for skateboarding,)” McMahon was candid about the financial side of his passion.
While he has received a sponsor, he has noted that longboarding doesn’t quite have the cultural saturation or appeal as skateboarding; that is something he hopes he can play a small part in.
He said that while skateboarding was added as a sport to the 2020 Olympics, he said that funding for athletes in Ireland is modest, and longboarding isn’t on the Department of Sports’ radr.
Despite the hurdles, however, there is a clear passion for McMahon to go for a three-in-a-row and bring the European championship back to Bayside again.