Christiana Means was a guest at Nine Club a few days ago where she spoke about her experience training the Chinese Olympic team for 3 months. 

From her experience the Chinese Olympic skate team, “was a totally different approach then what I’d seen skateboarding evolve to.” Christiana says that the Chinese government had pulled 200 kids from all over the province of China from various sports that they thought would translate into “good” skaters. Sports like gymnastics and martial arts or soccer and then ran tests to see which kids were the most adaptable to skateboarding. That number of 200 kids was brought down to 30-50 kids and the remaining 30-50 kids were then put under contract to train for the upcoming Olympic games. 

“This is crazy” utter Chris Roberts as he stumbles over his word in disbelief, “Because the parents are getting paid, the kids now… I just su.. because I discovered skateboarding, you discovered skateboarding, we did it because we loved it and we fell in love with it. Now listen, some of these kids may fall in love with it because they’re in that position… they may not.”

Jeron Wilson, to the left of Chris Roberts, put an emphasis on, “may”. 

And just a moment later says, “We found skateboarding and it hit us, in a natural way” 

Kelly Hart then asks, “So how do you teach them how to skate?” Christiana opens up about the discomfort in having to push or rather force kids to skate. She would have to half-heartedly encourage these kids to try an obstacle and watch a kid get hurt trying something that the new skaters weren’t ready for. As Christiana and the cast of the Nine Club say repeatedly, it was insane. It’s definitely an emotional rollercoaster.

Check out the video for the full story!