Slayer to Chief Keef: The music that helps Olympic skateboarders soar

PARIS - Brazilian skateboarder Pedro Barros was midway through his final run of men’s park prelims Wednesday at Place de la Concorde when his ear buds suddenly and inexplicably disconnected. This can be a disconcerting feature of modern wireless technology when someone is walking down the sidewalk. Now imagine it happening at the Paris Olympics, somewhere between the takeoff and the landing of an alley-oop tail-grab 540, and you can see why this might have been a problem.

But there was nothing to fear: Barros, a 29-year-old from the beach city of Florianópolis who fronts a hard-rock band in his spare time, sang the missing lyrics of Joy Division’s “Shadowplay” to himself.

“And then I landed the trick,” said Barros, who advanced to the finals, only to finish fourth and narrowly miss a medal, “and the song came back on, and I was like, ‘Yessssssssss!”

If you thought Olympic athletes weren’t allowed to listen to music through ear buds while competing, you probably haven’t witnessed Olympic skateboarding. It’s not something you would see at, for example, track and field (banned by rule) or swimming (an all-around bad idea in a pool).

But in an unscientific survey of park skateboard athletes competing Wednesday at a picturesque venue with views of the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, about a quarter of them competed while listening via ear buds to the music of their choice — most of it extremely loud and fast.

“I’m kind of all over the map,” said 24-year-old American Tom Schaar, who won silver Wednesday behind Australia’s Keegan Palmer. In this case, all over the map meant a pivot from thrash metal to drill-style hip-hop. “Today it was Slayer into Chief Keef. Basically, whatever I’m into that day. It helps me stay in the moment.”

“Aggro music, real fast-paced stuff,” 17-year-old American Gavin Bottger said. “Like Dystopia.”

“Mostly rap. Mostly Drake,” said Spain’s Alain Kortabitarte, who wouldn’t bite on a question about Drake’s gruesome knockout loss in this summer’s diss-track battle with Kendrick Lamar. “I know, I know. Still Drake.”

“I like the vibe of that kind of old punkish rock, kind of dark stuff,” Barros said. “Stuff that expresses a lot of feelings. For me, skating is all about feeling, and to be able to have something that connects me with the feelings inside that sometimes words can’t explain is really magical.”

The ear-bud-wearing crowd has to deal with occasional technological challenges — the frequent disconnect-reconnect cycles that seem to come out of nowhere. And Kortabitarte had to do without his Drake on his final run because the battery in one of his ear buds died.

In those critical moments, and for the ear-bud-averse at all times, there is DJ Redbeard.

An ex-skater turned Amsterdam-based mix-master, Redbeard (real name: Ramoen Verbeet) is a musical polyglot who traverses the globe on the skateboarding circuit, commandeering the sound system at each stop and feeding the athletes, as well as the crowd, a steady diet of tunes, from classic skater rock to cutting-edge, underground releases.

“We all grow up watching skate videos. And in the ‘80s and ‘90s, there weren’t that many, so you’d watch the same ones over and over,” DJ Redbeard said. “And that became the soundtrack. ‘Brave Captain’ by Firehose was huge because it was in one video. And, obviously, everything by Black Sabbath. … But I tour around the world with (the skateboarders), and I’m always trying to learn about them. I want to dig deeper and deeper so I can understand what makes them tick.”

From his perch in a booth above the course, he stood in front of his DJ rig with his start list of athletes at the ready.

Sweden’s Hampus Winberg, who tends toward high-strung Swedish metal (Teddybear’s “Powertrip”) and Dirty South hip-hop (Outkast’s “Bombs Over Baghdad”).

Thomas Augusto, representing Puerto Rico, gets a steady diet of that island’s favorite native son, Latin trap giant Bad Bunny. When Redbeard played that artist’s “El Apagón,” an homage to Puerto Rico, “Dude,” Augusto said, “I got goose bumps.”

Spain’s Danny Leon, according to Redbeard, is “very smooth,” so he gets California surf-rock or Catalan’s Gipsy Kings. When Redbeard played the latter’s frenzied, Spanish-language cover of “Hotel California,” he got a finger-pointed thank you from Leon down below as he got ready to drop into the bowl.

Italy’s Alex Sorgente, a 26-year-old who trains mostly in West Palm Beach, Fla., and considers himself an old soul, got pioneering Austin punk band Big Boys.

“I didn’t tell him to play anything. He knows what I like,” Sorgente said. “Every now and then, before I drop in, he plays a song he knows I love, and it gets me hyped. Metal, old punk rock: Agent Orange, Adolescents, Dead Boys, Metallica, Black Sabbath. Grew up skating at a lot of bowls and ramps with a bunch of old heads, so that was my upbringing.”

Most of the athletes said the music, whether via ear buds or from DJ Redbeard’s library, matters only in the few seconds before they drop in.

“I listen to the music before I skate,” Italy’s Alessandro Mazzara said. “But when I’m skating, I don’t think about anything. I don’t hear the music. I don’t hear the crowd. I’m locked in.”

Redbeard doesn’t get offended if skateboarders prefer their own in-ear soundtrack over his choices, but he plays athlete-specific tunes anyway. It’s like a challenge to him. They might be listening to what they want to hear, but Redbeard has what they don’t even know they need.

“Sometimes I’m watching down there,” he said, “and if they like the song I put on right before they drop in, they’ll take the ear buds out. That’s when I know I’ve got them nailed.”