Alexis Sablone has been a figure in skateboarding since the mid-2000s. She first got a bit of recognition from a skate part she did at the age of 16 in PJ Ladd’s Wonderful, Horrible, Life. She is also an architect, animator, and artist. She is a renaissance woman.
Who is Alexis Sablone?
Alexis Sablone is most famous for her skateboarding career, but she really has done and is doing much more than just skateboarding.
Alexis Sablone is a New York-based skateboarder, artist, animator, and architect. She has competed in every X-games since 2009 and placed 4th in the Olympic Women’s Street Skateboarding in Tokyo in 2021. She was ranked 12th in street skating in the world before competing in the Olympics (source). She entered her first skate contest when she was just 12 years old.
She completed a Bachelor’s of architecture degree in 2008 and a Master’s of architecture in 2016. She has skated for Element, Firm, City Stars, Organika, and WKND. She is also currently sponsored by Converse. She has 3 X-Game gold medals and quite a few bronze and silver medals as well.
She is quite down to earth, frequently helps design skateboarding sculptures and skateparks, and is nonchalantly and openly queer. She grew up in the Boston and New York skate scene and shirked the common skateboarding trope of moving to the West Coast to advance your career that your peers like PJ Ladd did in the 2000s.
She also is an outspoken critic of women’s equality in skateboarding. She has shown it is possible to make a full income with skateboarding and sponsors but has also openly discussed the lack of pay equality in the sport.
If you’re interested in skateboarding, but can’t seem to get started, check out our ultimate skating motivation compilation.
Alexis Sablone: Olympics 2021
Going into the Olympics in Tokyo 2021, Alexis Sablone was ranked 12th in the world for women’s street skating. She wasn’t the highest-rated US skateboarder competing in the Olympics, but she might have been the most experienced. And this experience showed.
She finished just shy of 3rd, barely missing a medal in women’s street skating. Sablone was in a position to medal late in the contest but fell on both of her last two trick attempts. She performed better in the Olympic finals than in the semifinals where she placed 8th.
Alexis Sablone was 34 years old at the time of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Japan’s Momiji Nishiya won gold at the age of 13 years old. The 2nd and 3rd place medals went to Brazil’s Rayssa Leal and Japan’s Funa Nakayama who are 13 years old and 16 years old respectively.
How Tall is Alexis Sablone?
Is Alexis Sablone a 7-foot tall monster? Are the rumors true?
Alexis Sablone is quite small and stands at just 5 feet 4 inches (163 cm) tall. There isn’t much to say about this. You can see in images that she is about the same height as fellow Olympian Mariah Duran and about 3-5 inches shorter than Nyjah Hudson who is listed as 5 feet 10 inches.
Does anyone really care about her height? Being smaller can actually be an asset in skateboarding so maybe being smaller has helped her.
How Old is Alexis Sablone?
Alexis Sablone was a couple of decades older than the skaters that took medals in Tokyo in 2021. But how old is she?
As of August 2021, Alexis Sablone is 35 years old. She began skating at the age of 9 years old and has been skating since with only short breaks in between. Her birthday is August 12th.
Happy Birthday, Alexis Sablone! It was just two days after her birthday when I wrote this article 🙂
Alexis Sablone’s Architecture Examples
While resources with details on Alexis Sablone’s architecture work are sparse she has designed a few skateable sculptures such as a sheet metal sculpture in Florida, a Brooklyn sculpture, and a sculpture installation called Lady in the Square in Sweden. She has also helped design a skatepark in Montclair, New Jersey.
Lady in the Square
Lady in the Square is a skateable statue created by Alexis Sablone in Malmo, Sweden. This artistic, yet utilitarian sculpture was built in 2018 as a part of three installation pieces commissioned by the forward-thinking city. The piece is supposed to be enjoyable for non-skaters and skaters alike and is something a bit more aesthetic than your typical skatepark.
Alexis Sablone’s Art
Alexis Sablone has many creative outlets that include animation, painting, architecture, design, and sculpture. She has had a graphic novel in the works that “seems to never get finished”. She garnered attention not only for her skating ability in her skate video debut in PJ Ladd’s Wonderful, Horrible, Life, but also her clothing style.
She designs new deck models for each season of decks with her sponsor WKND and other skate companies such Homage Skateboards. You can find examples of her art interspersed with skating vids on her Instagram. Below is an example of some recent work with Homage Skateboards.
View this post on Instagram
Where Does Alexis Sablone Live?
Alexis Sablone could probably live anywhere, but she chose New York and has grown to love the density and culture. Despite living in New York for over a decade, the city still manages to surprise her.
Alexis Sablone currently is based in Brooklyn, New York. She originally moved to New York to study architecture at Barnard University in 2004. She frequently mentions in interviews how she really likes living in New York. She has also spent time in San Fransansico, Boston, and Old Saybrook, Connecticut where she was born.
New York is lucky to have her call the Big Apple home.
Where Was Alexis Sablone Born?
Alexis Sablone was born somewhere you have probably never heard of.
Alexis Sablone was born in Old Saybrook, Connecticut in 1986. Old Saybrook is a tiny town with a population of just over 10,000 people. Due to this and the fact that skateboarding was still very underground in the 90s, Alexis Sablone started off by skating mostly alone in her mom’s garage.
It’s honestly strange to think that skateboarding reached a 9-year-old girl in Old Saybrook in the 90s, but somehow it happened.
How Long Has Alexis Sablone Been Skateboarding?
Alexis Sablone is a beast and beasts are made overnight. She has been skating for quite some time.
Alexis Sablone has been skateboarding since 1995 when she was just 9 years old. She has been skateboarding for 26 years as of 2021. When she started skating, she mostly skated by herself in her mom’s garage. She entered her first skate jam at the age of twelve years old.
So if you just started skating at the tender age of 21 years old, don’t be discouraged. Sablone is an Olympic skater and most of us will never reach her level.
Is Alexis Sablone LGBTQ?
Some people are interested in LGBTQ representation in sports and luckily Alexis Sablone can represent!
Alexis Sablone is a queer athlete who has a girlfriend named Keshia who she has been with for two and half years as of 2019. They do not live together but have separate apartments in New York. Alexis Sablone is openly gay and isn’t very outspoken about the matter though her most recent converse show features a small rainbow tab on the back.
Do I want to talk about sexuality? I’m gay. Ta-da!
– Alexis Sablone 2019 (Source)
Does Alexis Sablone Skate Regular or Goofy?
So what is Alexis Sablone’s skating style? We know she skates street, but is she regular or goofy?
Alexis Sablone skates goofy. This means that her right foot is placed at the front of her skateboard and her left foot is used to push off. Most skaters skate “regular” which means that they push with their right foot and have their left foot placed at the front of their board.
Neat stuff.
If you want more info on pro-LGBTQ skating groups or women skating groups, check out our guide here.
Conclusion
Alexis Sablone is pretty cool and definitely a very multi-faceted person. She is a shining example of someone who is successful and makes a living through alternative means to a traditional career. She skates with great skill and creativity, and she represented America with style at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
I hope you had as much fun reading about all these Alexis Sablone details as I did digging them up through interviews and other sources.
Anyway, thanks for reading, and look out for more articles from Board and Wheels.
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