Page 75 - THE ENDLESS WAVE | Skateboarding, Death & Spirituality

THE ENDLESS WAVE | PART ONE
A Celebration of Life
Willi Winkels was truly both a skate pioneer and a legend. You might not know his name, but if you ride a laminated skateboard, you have him to thank. Willi Winkels did a huge amount for action sports and most sadly, riders are blissfully unaware. I wrote four pages about him in my book The Concrete Wave. While he is famous for creating the first laminated skate- board decks, he also ventured off into lots of other areas too. Willi was a pioneer in the world of snowboarding and actually invented the word “snowboard.”
My earliest memory of Willi was his skate team coming to my hometown of London, Ontario back in 1977. This was a major contest, and Willi had his amazing demo team out in full force. To my impressionable mind, watching Willi was an absolutely life-changing event. He rode all kinds of boards, in- cluding a gas-powered longboard and an eight-wheeler. The team was made up of skaters a little older than me and I was seriously jealous of them.
Willi promoted skateboarding and snowboarding for many decades. He was also a pioneer in wakeboarding. He also invented mobile half pipes and a port- able cassette player well before Sony came out with the Walkman. The ciga- rette lighter powered by the sun was pure genius too!
When it came time to interview him for The Concrete Wave book, he was very gracious with his time. It was 1997 and 20 years had passed since I had seen
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