Keegan’s Keen

February 09 2012 | Posted in Blog,  Lifestyle,  Skate, 

Bob Burnquist was 28 years old and had already re-invented vert skating when Keegan Palmer was born.

Now, just eight years later, the little dude from the Gold Coast with a six-foot bowl and 14-foot vert ramp in his backyard is set to go head-to-head with Burnquist and a host of other legends of skating in the Australian Open of Surfing Beach Bowl.

Having just started fourth grade at Kings Christian College in Burleigh, Keegan has more US stamps in his passport than he does teeth in his mouth. I mean, the kid's still too small to ride the roller coaster at Movie World but he's already been on tour with the Big Day Out, skating with Renton Millar, and has skated a heap of contests in California.

At 3ft 5in, he's been dropping ramps six times his height. And since arriving on site at Manly on Friday, he's spent more time in the air than he has in the Beach Bowl.

"What happened was we were at the Hurley ABC championships and we do a lot of skating with Hurley team rider Jack Fardell - who also skates our private bowl with Keegan. Well, he's watched Keegan develop over the past 16 months and sounded out the guys at Hurley and they asked us what we thought about Keegan riding for Hurley.

"We were really stoked."

Hold up a bit. The little guy is eight and he has pro skaters chilling at his house, skating?

"Haha. No, we have our own warehouse. We came back from a trip to California and all the eight to 12-year-olds were absolutely killing it around the six-foot range and we just felt like the only way for our kids to keep up with skill development was to have something that would take all the stress out of life - something that wouldn’t affect my busy work schedule or his mum too much.

"With our own bowl, we can do homework, dinner and then still skate until 9pm at night. And it's working. By our second trip to America, Keegan was winning competitions.

"We also have a 14-foot vert ramp."

And you can forget The Wiggles and cuddly toys, at two years old Keegan got his first taste of skateboarding and he hasn't looked back since. He is a few inches over three-feet and tips the scales at about 25kg. But on his board, he’s all man.

"He's been blasting airs for the past 16 months or so," says Chris, an international software genius from San Diego.

"We travel to the US a lot for training and he skates the big stuff and it's just a lot of fun.

"But don't be mistaken. He has fear. There are a lot of mental blocks. I mean, he's only eight years old and he's skating things six times his height. And I'm glad the fear is there because without that, he'd just go out and wreck himself.

"But his mum and I aren't putting too much pressure on him. We just keep saying one thing - that we'll just focus on getting better and we'll see what happens."

And what's happening this week is Keegan will be hitting the Beach Bowl in a contest with some of the biggest names in world skating. No big deal...

RELATED NEWS