At 66, Judi Oyama would be considered a senior citizen by Japan’s official standards, but nothing about her life fits that description.

Instead of slowing down, she’s speeding up. In Japan, the country of her ancestry, where grace and restraint outrank adrenaline, most women her age likely left such thrills behind long ago. But not Oyama. A Skateboarding Hall of Fame inductee and a Guinness World Record holder as the world’s oldest competitive female skateboarder, she’s proof that the joy of sports doesn’t retire.

Born in California, Oyama grew up with an older sibling, far from the culture that shaped her grandparents — her father’s side of the family from Wakayama Prefecture and her mother’s from Kagoshima Prefecture. Her parents, she says, were part of a generation of Japanese Americans who had grown disconnected from their own history.

“I have always wanted to go to Japan. It’s on my bucket list,” Oyama told The Japan Times from her Santa Cruz home, where a halfpipe sits in the backyard. She was in the news recently after World Skate, the governing body for skateboarding, released a video celebrating her Guinness induction.

“I feel a connection to Japan because that’s where my roots are and where my grandparents were born. My mom and dad tried to Americanize us and never taught us Japanese — I think they just wanted us to blend in. We’re missing a lot of our heritage because of that. But lately I’ve been taking photos out of archives, rescanning them and sharing them with my cousins and relatives. We’re not forgetting our past.”

Oyama has been skating for more than five decades and now owns 65 boards. At 13, she first stepped onto a homemade skateboard her brother built in woodshop class, testing it on the driveway before the two upgraded to a $24.95 board from a local surf shop. A horseback rider as well, she used to tie her skateboard to the saddle and rode to quiet neighborhoods to skate.

Just two years later, at 15, she entered her first competition, telling herself, “Just one race,” not knowing it would lead to a lifetime on wheels.

Oyama made her mark in both vert and street skateboarding, but her passion has always been in downhill and slalom racing — the latter of which she now competes in internationally. Asked why she continues to compete instead of just riding for fun, she said, “It’s the adrenaline. I want to see how far I can go at my age.”

At 43, she won the 2003 Slalom World Championships, and in 2013 she was ranked second in the United States and first in the masters division overall.

Oyama and the Santa Cruz skate team in the mid-1970s. When Oyama got into the sport, skateboarding was dominated by boys and men. | Courtesy of Judi Oyama

Despite her success, Oyama’s visibility in the sport wasn’t always her own. She was often mistaken for Japanese American Peggy Oki — the only female member on the iconic Zephyr skate team — a confusion Oyama attributes to the 1970s, when most people couldn’t imagine more than one Asian American on a skateboard. Even now, she jokes, a quick Google search sometimes mixes up their photos.

Skateboarding was dominated by boys and men, and for a girl who looked Asian, Oyama had to fight twice as hard to be taken seriously. Her approach was simple: let her moves on the deck speak for themselves. But respect didn’t come easily.

“It was hard in a way that the guys didn’t want to talk to you or skate with you,” Oyama said. “A lot of times I was by myself, skating with people but no one would talk to me.The magazines always followed the bleached blonde girls. I remember practicing before a contest — I’d start skating, and the professional photographers would walk away.”

In those early days, she had to bring her own camera and ask a friend to take pictures. Now the sport she once helped shape has gone global — skateboarding is in the Olympics, and young Japanese women are winning medals and standing in front of the cameras that once turned away.

“It makes me happy to see Japanese girls doing well,” Oyama said.

Skateboarding became an official Olympic sport at the Tokyo Games in 2021, when Japan swept the women’s events, with teenagers Momiji Nishiya and Sakura Yosozumi winning gold in street and park, respectively.

“Sometimes I wonder if they even know there were two Japanese girls skating from the very beginning,” she said.

“I raced Suzuka Nakanishi in the last two World Skate Games, she was 17 when we raced in Argentina and 19 in Italy. She is very sweet, but since I don’t speak Japanese and she doesn’t speak much English, we don’t get to chat much.”

Still, moments like these remind Oyama how much the sport and its community have evolved. Over her long career, she has seen women’s skateboarding progress from small purses to equal pay with men.

Oyama in action at the World Skate Games in Chieti, Italy, in September 2024 | Courtesy of Judi Oyama

These days, Oyama finds herself racing against skaters young enough to be her grandchildren, and she can’t help but get a kick out of it.

“It’s funny because I’ll go to a race and people don’t expect me to be competing,” Oyama said. “I was in Las Vegas for a race, and an Uber driver asked if the skateboards I was carrying were for my grandkids. I said, ‘No, they’re actually mine,’ and then they get curious about how, at my age, I’m still skating.”

That curiosity doesn’t bother her — if anything, it fuels her. Injuries have never fazed her; they’re simply part of the ride. Years ago, she dislocated and broke her ankle at a skate park attempting a frontside air, and she’s picked up her share of road rash from crashes while slalom racing and going down hills. But she jokes that she’s been hurt worse just tripping over something in her backyard and falling on the concrete.

“You can get hurt doing anything,” she said. “At least I’m going to be doing something I love. When I go to the skate park and ride the pools, I go low and slow. I could go higher but I don’t want to. As long as I’m having fun that’s all that matters.”

With two grown sons and her own skateboarding apparel line, Badass Skatemom, Oyama isn’t slowing down anytime soon. Between running her graphic design business and carving out time to skate, she also coaches emerging stars like 17-year-old Leiola Kahaku, who finished second in the Women’s Pro Division at the 2025 U.S. Slalom Skateboarding Nationals in Colorado in August.

As if that weren’t enough, Oyama took up CrossFit at 53. The 6 a.m. workouts keep her grounded and healthy — it is less about competition than staying strong for the life she loves. She traces that drive to her parents, who spent part of their youth in an internment camp during World War II and never had the same opportunities she does. Maybe that’s why her bucket list keeps growing.

“On my bucket list, besides going to Japan and seeing some of the places my parents were from, is a downhill skateboarding race called Maryhill,” Oyama said. “It’s a winding road in Washington, over two miles long. They do freeride events there every year, and I’ve always wanted to try it.”

“Why do I skate? Beyond enjoying it for myself, my goal is to show older women that you can stay active if you stay in shape. I hope I can inspire the elders to keep moving.”