The two men who will carry Fijian skateboarding into the Brisbane Olympics have dropped into a skate bowl for the first time.
William Fe'ofa'aki Sanday and Maikeli Baleigau Uluilakeba landed in Australia on Friday to attend the Rumble on the Reef skateboarding championships in Mackay.
The pair was initially scouted by Donny Fraser, who stumbled across their Facebook page 'Fijian Skateboarders' earlier this year.
Sanday was first introduced to skateboarding during his high school years in Vanuatu, where he and a French colleague drew inspiration from other internationals on boards.
"We started from zero basically and he improved, and I improved ... we just kept pushing each other's limits," Sanday said.
When he returned to Fiji, his friend Uluilakeba quickly joined him in falling in love with the sport.
Breaking barriers
The pair said while there was the occasional foreigner spotted on a board, skateboarding was not the done thing on the island.
"It started just the two of us, because the thing is, in the Fijian culture, new things are seen as kind of odd and [Fijians] don't gravitate to it," Uluilakeba said.
"So, seeing this new thing, people don't really try and associate themselves with it.
"For quite a while, I think for a whole year, it was just the two of us skating around."
The duo slowly managed to shift the perception, holding skate sessions at the Fijian Parliament House every weekend.
"In Fiji, we don't have any publicly available skating facilities," Sanday said.
"At the moment, all we do is just we ride around wherever there's smooth pavement.
"In Suva, [Parliament House] is the place with the most paved and smooth cement."
The pair saw their first skate park in person during a regional pathway camp visit to Toowoomba five years ago, but they never expected they would one day be dropping into a bowl themselves.
"We never pictured ourselves trying, it was a foreign thing for us even to imagine," Uluilakeba said.
They said they simply sat in the bowl admiring the skaters passing by in a flurry of tricks.
But since landing in Australia for the competition, the duo has skated and dropped into their first bowl.
Their jam-packed itinerary has also included showing the boys how to host, judge and coach young skaters.
Fiji at 2032 Olympics
Mr Fraser wants to see Australia's neighbours build up their skateboarding culture to create a strong Oceanic competition ahead of the Brisbane Olympics.
All three men believe Fiji is the perfect place to start.
"I strongly believe that the potential in Fiji is absolutely great," Sanday said.
"You see [Fijian] rugby players everywhere [in] Europe, even here in Australia, and I think that we can also tap into skateboarding."
In skateboarding, the top 20 best men and women skaters will compete at the Olympics with a maximum allocation of two per country — but there is also one guaranteed spot for each region such as Oceania.
"Australia is really dominant, it almost impedes us in a sense from potentially winning a gold medal," Mr Fraser said.
"What I would like to see is competition for us across the Pacific.
"I want to see all those countries really putting the pressure on us ... it's going to improve us here; it's going to improve them there."
Mr Fraser is working with Sanday, Uluilakeba and the Pacific Olympics Committee to find land and fund infrastructure to support the Fijian skateboarding dream.
Mr Fraser said the real issue was obtaining land, given the limited availability on the island.
Sanday and Uluilakeba admit they are unlikely to get themselves to the Olympics, but the possibility of laying the foundations for the next generation of Fijian skaters empowers them.
"To open a gateway for the rest of our brothers and sisters that would love to participate [is our goal]," Uluilakeba said.
"We're so happy to get back to the younger generation back home and prepare them for an event like this — especially for Brisbane Olympics.
"It would be something so special for us to see."
