Ignacio Echeverría (image source: trickandroll.com)
Capital cities can be the loneliest places. Unlike small settlements where people know each other, they are impersonal and all too often foster an attitude of selfishness within the population. So many would rather pretend to be on their phone than make eye contact with a homeless person. Not Ignacio Echeverría. At a time when others were running for their lives from an Islamic terror attack, he chose to turn and fight armed only with his board, against men with lethal weapons who were murdering innocent civilians all around him.
Such heroism is incredible. Furthermore, being compounded by his being a skateboarder this has really moved me. Skateboarders can fly to another country, roll up to a skatepark or spot and be in the company of friends almost instantly, even without a common language. We are brothers; we tend to look at our world through a similar filter. We know how it feels when we see someone else slam trying a trick; we also know how it feels to make it after trying for weeks.Skaters can often tell quite a bit about someone just by seeing them push down the street for a few seconds.
We can all feel that frontside grind. (image source: trickandroll.com)
So although I never got to meet Ignacio, seeing pictures of him on his board it's almost as if I did. Many skaters would surely feel the same. Hopefully there are some companies out there now thinking about some kind of tribute. Perhaps a guest board or t-shirt? It would be a nice gesture to do that and give any profits to his family. I'd get one.
It would be nice if he got a mural at his local park, though really he deserves a statue. And I really hope he gets one that's skateable, it's what he would have wanted, right?
Perhaps this might make the general public look at skaters more favourably in the future? Probably not. And that doesn't matter to any of us I'm sure. What matters is that this hero is not forgotten.
A real life hero. (image source: telegraph.co.uk)
