Filipina skateboarding star Margielyn Didal: “I’m just doing my thing” 

Margielyn Didal flashes a wicked grin as she flexes her bicep showing off the Olympic rings tattooed onto the inside of her right arm.

“I actually have to work with the muscle,” the Filipina skateboarder says to Olympics.com still laughing, “but it’s getting there.”

Smiling as she explains how she had to get the tattoo incrementally so she could comfortably sleep at night, it’s at once obvious that getting to Tokyo 2020 remains an immense point of pride for Didal.

“It was fun,” she confirms of her experience Japan where showcasing skateboarding for the first time to the world. “To skate with other girl skaters, it was fun.”

Footage of the Asian Games gold medallist cheering for her competitors on the course in Tokyo captured the hearts of fans all over the world seeing Olympic skateboarding for the first time.

Watching Didal and the other women skaters revelling in each other’s successes became for many a highlight of the Games.

What the Filipina didn’t expect when she dropped in was quite how the Olympics would also change people’s opinions of her and her sport:

“The big contests, especially the Olympics, have changed a lot. Especially how people look at the skaters. Before people were like ‘Oh, skaters skating, there’s no future’ but after the Olympics people were like ‘Oh, skaters! Oh, Margie!’

“It’s way, way different!”

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Margie Didal: Fun first and foremost

To say the Olympics has been a seismic shift for Didal would be an understatement.

With the spotlight thrust upon her by the Games, the Filipina’s following has ballooned too and continues to do so, not least because of her friendship with the Philippines’ first Olympic gold medallist Hidilyn Diaz.

But to point out to Didal the measure of her impact in changing the perception her sport and her popularity elicits a giggle tinged with nervousness.

“I am just skating!” She says insistently. “I’m just doing my thing, having fun, skateboarding.”

But in reality, her world is much more than that.

Now in her second month away from her home in Cebu City through force of travelling and competing, Didal admits she’s a little bit homesick.

A Philippine takeout food bag sitting not too far away from her in Rome where she is currently sitting hints that perhaps it’s a more than just a ‘little.’

Given everything she is doing to keep the flying the flag for skateboarding and the Philippines keeping things fun is so crucial to street skater.

“For me, I have to enjoy it so that I can focus,” she explains. “I don’t want to freak out. If I think too much, if I worry too much – it's not me.”

Her more laidback style becomes ever clearer as she details how she navigates the demands of her sport. Not fixating on failure, taking breaks, eating rice in the morning are all things she does to lighten her load:

“It’s hard sometimes because you feel like you’ve got to do tricks but you’ve just got to enjoy it.

“If you feel tired sometimes, you’re going to break and sometimes you’ll hurt yourself – so rest,” she adds, “sometimes your body doesn’t work with you the whole time.”

Similarly, when Didal struggles to put something down she comes back to it rather than stewing over her failure: “Earlier I tried to skate a rail and it was weird for me and I was like, “I’ll come back and skate it. I’ll probably get it next time.”

Keeping it light and enjoyable is also reflected in how Didal moves towards major contests, like Paris 2024 where skateboarding is set to return.

While the Filipina is eager to tick France’s capital off her bucket list she’s not making it her one and only objective:

“Step by step,” Didal says explaining her attitude towards big competitions. “It’s not really ‘I want to go there, that’s the goal.’ Everything is about taking it slowly. Going to the contests, trying to qualify and try to make it.

“I just love to skate and turn out for other people too. I try my best but there are so many other good skaters too.”

Whatever the future may hold for Didal as she gets her Olympic qualification campaign underway at the first qualifiers in Italy you can be sure she'll do it with a magnetic smile and by having lots of fun.

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