Champion skateboarder Rachel Reinhard on her career and her hopes for the future of the sport
“I was usually the only girl,” says Rachel Reinhard, reminiscing about her days as a young, female skateboarder in Colorado Springs. Reinhard, who competed seven times in the X Games, was one of the first—and most successful—females in the sport.
It started as a way for then-fifth-grader Reinhard to tag along with her brother. “I ended up loving it,” she says. Days at the Briargate Skatepark evolved into entering local contests, and from there, her first sponsorship.
Shad Spencer, owner of Lunchbreak Skateboards, can still remember when he first saw Reinhard skateboard. “She was skating at Harrison High School and she was like 11 or 12,” he says.
Being a successful teenage skateboarder and one of the few females in the sport challenged Reinhard. She says, “Sometimes I felt like there was more pressure, like more eyes on me.”
Whether that pressure held her back or helped catapult her to a phenom is anyone’s guess, but despite frequently being the only female skateboarder, she thrived.
Achieving the Cover of ESPN RISE
In 2008, during her senior year, Reinhard landed the spot on the cover of ESPN RISE, a magazine that sheds light on “the outstanding work of student-athletes both nationally and locally.” To the young athlete, signing copies of the magazine at her high school felt surreal.
She says never felt famous, though. “I think to be famous you get recognized by a lot of people, and I was recognized by skateboarders,” she says.
Even while placing at the X Games, working on a video part (a mashup of difficult tricks performed out on the street, as opposed to in a skatepark) and competing at other contests around the country, Reinhard was still pursuing her other lifelong dream: teaching.
“Ever since I was little when people would ask you ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher.” A grueling skateboard schedule slowed a young Reinhard’s progress through college, but she achieved the dream – this year will be her eighth as an elementary school teacher.
The Physical Toll of Skateboarding
The immense physical toll of the sport was part of what pushed Reinhard out of professional skateboarding in 2015. “My knees, after I had surgery in 2009, it never was the same.”
Reinhard lists dislocated elbows, ankle surgery, and sprains, saying that when she competed in her final X Games, placing ninth, “There was more stress and pressure than enjoying it.”
Years later, Reinhard remains a formidable talent. Spencer has been planning a video premiere, and he intends to publicly showcase that talent.
A video premiere is an event around a single video project—a mashup of skating footage. He hopes that the event, at Denver’s Oriental Theater on Oct. 16, will bring together the skating community for an evening that promotes Lunchbreak Skateboards and sheds light on his latest project: Maiden Voyage, a new line of skateboards designed with female skateboarders in mind.
When Spencer found out that his and Reinhard’s mutual friend Evan Kuzava had extensive footage of some of Reinhard’s “high-level talent,” he decided to spotlight her in the premiere.
Says Spencer, “I like the fact that she’s a grown adult, and she’s got other stuff going on, and she has a career, and she is still skateboarding.” It’s her impressive talent, though, that Spencer’s company will showcase this fall.
This past year has been a difficult one for the Colorado Springs skate scene. With two shootings at Memorial Skate Park, a popular skating spot downtown, the skating community is still reeling from an unexpected tragedy.
For Reinhard, the news of the first shooting, which took place last November, was particularly vivid: She knew one of the victims. “When I heard, it was devastating,” she says.
Despite the tragedy of last year, Reinhard is hopeful for the skating industry—and, in particular, the future of female skating. When she was competing, skateboarding was not represented at the Olympics. But in 2020, the sport debuted in Tokyo to fanfare, with both men’s and women’s contests.
“Skateboarding is hard,” she says. “And some of the girls coming up, they’re super good, so I think it’s cool that they’re getting recognized.”
