Downhill battle: HHS graduate represents US at World Roller Games
Mark Westfall very clearly remembers his son, Adam, looking up at him when he was 6 years old and saying, “You know, dad, one day I’m going to be a professional skateboarder.”
Little did he know, his son was telling the truth.
This summer, Homewood High School graduate Adam Westfall was chosen as one of six American men to represent the U.S. in the men’s downhill racing category at the World Roller Games. July 2019 was the first year that downhill skating was added as an Olympic-sanctioned sport.
Downhill racing involves riding downhill with a longboard — structured similarly to a skateboard, minus a few differences — as fast as possible while keeping the board under control. Since downhill skating is such a small sport, Adam Westfall said, sponsorship money is hard to come by. He was able to raise money to compete through a GoFundMe fundraiser for his trip to Barcelona, Spain, where the televised event took place in July.
He made it to the Round of 16 (the second round) of men’s downhill skateboarding.
During the time trial, he came in 18th with a time of 46.8 seconds.
Adam Westfall, a recent college graduate and only 23 years old, was excited and honored to be chosen for the competition. He said he’s hoping the fact that it is now recognized as an Olympic-sanctioned sport will help downhill racing gain more awareness and also be added to the 2024 Olympics.
Mark Westfall said his family has supported Adam since the beginning, and it’s been a joy to watch his son put in so many years of hard work and now see him reap the benefits from it. Over the years, he has watched his son put in literally thousands of hours on a skateboard — and it shows.
Although he started out competing “in the middle of pack,” Adam now competes directly with people who are internationally-recognized, his dad said, because he has progressed so much.
While Adam was growing up, he used to take him to the skate park at Homewood’s Central Park all the time so he could practice. Since he was still fairly young, his dad ended up spending a lot of hours at the park, watching him learn how to skate. Eventually, the skate park closed, so he would drive Adam and a car full of skaters all around Birmingham looking for safe spots for them to skate. Up until high school, Adam practiced street skating, until a local friend introduced him to longboarding down hills. Adam said they used to go around Birmingham to the spots with hills and race down them, eventually becoming good enough to compete nationally.
“He just really clicked with it, and it just clearly seemed to be a skillset that worked with him,” Mark Westfall said.
Soon, his dad was driving him to competitions all over the Southeast. When it came time for Adam to pick a college, he chose Appalachian State University in North Carolina because of the landscape and the strong downhill skating community. The “long, windy hills” made the place great for him to get better, Adam Westfall said, and the community kept him practicing.
Going to college there, Mark Westfall added, “definitively paid off,” because it accelerated his ability and Adam began to compete internationally after a couple years.
The International Downhill Federation, which is the governing body for downhill racing, Adam Westfall said, ranks competitors each year based on a point system to name the top downhill racers in the world. In order to get ranked by IDF, national competitors need to also compete internationally, so that’s what Adam decided to do.
In 2017, he went on a European tour of competitions. At the end of the year, he was tallied at 17th in the world. In 2018, studying abroad in Belgium allowed him to be able to compete internationally again, this time in several continents, and move up his ranking to seventh in the world.
“That was really phenomenal. My goal for the year was top 10, and I was able to make that happen. It was just tremendously exciting, I did not expect to go to that many races; it just kind of happened,” Adam Westfall said.
At races, competitors typically have a day or two to practice on the hill first. Then, they have the first official qualifying day, where each person does three or four runs by themselves on a timer, and they are ranked in a bracket, typically of 64 people, based on their fastest time. The next day, the top performers races in four-man heats, with the top two people advancing in each round until there are only four people left.
All the hills at the various competitions are different, Adam said, with some winding more and some being steeper, although most are all from 1 to 2 miles in length. Competitors are required to race in leather suits for protection.
Though it can be scary flying down a hill anywhere from 40 to 70 miles per hour, Adam Westfall said — especially if it’s a steep one and it’s pouring rain — losing is much scarier to him.
“You can ruin the race with one really small mistake. Once the rounds start going, it’s really, really easy to make a small mistake and lose,” he said, adding that everyone eventually makes mistakes due to the extreme nature of the sport.
Since races require leather suits and have some built-in safety features, practicing tends to be the more dangerous place where skaters get hurt. Just a few months ago, Adam made a mistake that ended with a broken collarbone and surgery.
Despite the risk of injury, Adam Westfall said competing is worth it, and his parents have been nothing but supportive over the years. Mark Westfall’s dad was an amateur racecar driver, so he grew up going to races and loving it. Last year, Adam said his family and girlfriend came to Romania to watch him compete internationally.
So far, Romania was the only race he made it to the podium, winning second place.
“He actually put the work behind it to become a really good skateboarder. …
It all paid off for him; it’s been a really fun journey,” Mark Westfall said.
In the near future, Adam Westfall hopes to find sponsors to help him afford going to competitions, which he has so far paid out-of-pocket. Visit adamwestfallskates.com for more information.