Ahead of his departure for the Tokyo Olympic Games, The Bugle has caught up with Kiama’s skateboarding Olympian, Kieran Woolley, who is in the US training hard for Olympic gold.

“Preparation for the games has been going well,” says Kieran.

“I’ve had a week in LA skating, caught a couple games of baseball in San Diego, surfed a bunch and skated plenty of parks and spots along the way.

“I even had an afternoon skating at Tony Hawk’s [American professional skateboarder] house with Jack Fardell [Australian professional skateboarder] which is a bucket list tick for sure!”

Australia officially announced its national skateboarding team at the start of July with five skaters to compete across the four events. Along with Kieran, the other four are Shane O’Neill, Keegan Palmer, Poppy Olsen and Hayley Wilson.

Kieran shows his form

At only 17 years old, Kieran is the youngest male park skater competing in Tokyo and has tied in age with swimmer Isaac Cooper for the youngest Australian Olympian heading to Tokyo.

“I’m heading off to Tokyo on the 27th and I’m working hard and making sure that it’s going to be a great show,” says Kieran.

“And in other news, my brother Danno made the most of my absence and won the Open Men’s division of the 360 Skate Competition the other weekend picking up $1000 cash.”

Kieran will be competing in the Park event at the Olympics. The course will be based on transition concrete bowls ranging from 1.5-3m in height and contain a range of skate features like spines, gaps and grinds. Competitors will try to execute their best sequence of tricks during three 45 second runs.

The skateboarding competition will run from 25-26 July for Street events and 4-5 August for Park events at Tokyo’s Ariake Urban Sports Park.