60 Years Old and Heading to the World Championships

There are plenty of reasons people tell themselves they're too old to skate.

The knees aren't what they were.

Falling hurts more.

Work gets in the way.

Family gets in the way.

Then there's Darren Miles.

He's 60.

He's from Plymouth.

And he's preparing to represent Great Britain in slalom skateboarding at the World Skate Games in Paraguay.

That got our attention.

Not because we think everybody needs to spend their sixties chasing a world championship.

Quite the opposite.

It's because his story challenges one of the easiest excuses to make:

Maybe I'm too old for this now.

He Didn't Start at 60

There's an important distinction here.

Miles isn't somebody who picked up a skateboard for the first time this year and somehow ended up representing his country.

According to his account in The Guardian, he first skateboarded at around 10 years old and has kept skating in different forms through his life.

What changed later was the kind of skating he was doing.

During his late fifties he got into slalom skateboarding.

If your picture of skateboarding is exclusively bowls, rails and kickflips, slalom looks very different.

The rider races through a course of cones, with speed, turning and board control taking priority over tricks.

Miles found something new to learn on the same basic object he'd been riding for decades.

Four wheels.

A deck.

A completely different challenge.

That's Progression Too

Skate culture can sometimes make progression look incredibly narrow.

Higher ollie.

Bigger rail.

Harder trick.

More stairs.

But what happens when your body changes?

You change your skating.

That doesn't necessarily mean making it easier.

It can mean making it different.

Miles has described getting into slalom as something that gave him a fresh technical challenge and renewed motivation. It also introduced him to a wider community through races and training.

That's probably the part of his story we like most.

He didn't try to recreate being 20.

He found another reason to keep rolling.

And This Isn't a Token Competition

The event he's heading towards is substantial.

The World Skate Games 2026 are scheduled to take place in Paraguay from 2–18 October 2026, bringing together numerous roller-sport disciplines.

The current international slalom calendar has the Slalom World Championships scheduled in Asunción for 14–17 October.

And this year, Skateboard GB has a specific selection pathway for slalom at the Games, alongside street, park, vert and downhill.

So when we say a 60-year-old British skateboarder is heading to a world championship, that's exactly what we mean.

Skateboarding Doesn't Owe You the Same Thing Forever

This is where Miles' story becomes bigger than one competition.

Your relationship with skating is allowed to change.

At 14, maybe all you want is to learn tricks.

At 25, maybe you're hunting street spots.

At 40, maybe an hour carving a bowl before work is perfect.

At 60, maybe you're weaving through cones as fast as your legs will carry you.

Or maybe you're just pushing around the park with your kid.

None of those versions is more legitimate than another.

You don't have to keep proving that you're the skateboarder you were ten years ago.

The Slam Still Counts

We shouldn't romanticise it either.

Age doesn't disappear because skateboarding makes you feel young.

Falling at 60 is still falling at 60.

Miles himself acknowledges injury as part of the calculation.

There's nothing weak about adjusting how you skate because your body has changed.

Pads.

Helmet.

Smaller transition.

Longer warm-up.

Different tricks.

Different discipline.

Take the consequences seriously and then work out what skating looks like now.

That's smarter than stopping because you're worried somebody thinks you've gone soft.

Imagine Still Being Excited About a Skateboard at 60

That's the thing we keep coming back to.

Not the championship.

Not representing Great Britain.

Not even the age.

It's the idea that after roughly half a century around skateboards, somebody can discover a different discipline and become excited enough about learning it to take it all the way to international competition.

That's pretty special.

And it cuts straight through the idea that progression has an age limit.

There will eventually be tricks you stop doing.

There might be ramps you decide aren't worth the risk anymore.

Your knees will probably have opinions.

Fine.

Find another line.

Because maybe getting older isn't about desperately trying to skate exactly like you used to.

Maybe it's about discovering how you want to skate next.

You don't age out of skateboarding.

You adapt your line.

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