Chariots of fire: The skate kids going for Olympic gold

He's 14. He hasn't yet started his GCSEs. His voice is in the squeaky space between treble and baritone. He mumbles his words. His body is undeveloped, and his blond hair falls in innocent, Michelangelo curls down his neck. He is, in short, a boy. But boy, what a boy.

Paul-Luc Ronchetti may look like a scrap, but he is already one of Britain's top skateboarders. He and his Norwich schoolfriend, Sam Beckett, 15, are taking half-pipe or "vert" skating to new levels. They're beating older, professional riders in Britain, and competing with the world's best at competitions in Europe and America. Last week, at the Mystic Cup in Prague, Beckett placed eighth and Ronchetti 12th. Earlier in the summer, Ronchetti won both major British competitions against a field of professionals, with Beckett snapping at his heels.

Competitive skateboarding might sound like a contradiction in terms. Since "sidewalk surfing" was invented in California in the 1950s, skateboarding's ethos has been fiercely anti-establishment, baggy-trousered and laid-back. Skaters weren't competitors. They were hipsters who left point-scoring to the jocks. But as computer games and extreme-sports channels have made skateboarding a globally popular activity, competitive boarding has entered the athletic mainstream. Now, on a well-organised and well-funded circuit of professional tours, the world's best skaters fight for medals – and pots of money.

Skateboarding's arrival in the mainstream will be complete when the International Olympic Committee declares it an official sport for the 2012 London Olympics. Vert skating – the discipline in which Ronchetti and Beckett excel – is set to be the gold riband event. Competitors will be judged on their ability to gain height off the lip of the half-pipe, pull tricks, and land with style.

Neil Danns, 44, is a one-time British vert skating champion who now skates with Beckett and Ronchetti in Dairylea's travelling exhibition outfit, Team Extreme. He believes both boys have what it takes to be world-beaters.

"It's unbelievable what they can do," says Danns. "Paul-Luc can already pull 540s, 360 kickflips, Gay Twists. I couldn't do what he can do now at any stage in my career. That's how fast these kids are learning. The level they've got to in four years used to take the best people in my generation 10 years. Part of that is the sport evolving, but part of it is these kids being amazingly talented."

Both Ronchetti and Beckett have caught the eye of some legends of the sport. The iconic American skateboarder Tony Hawk – whose video games have done more to make the sport globally popular than anything else – emailed The Independent to deliver his verdict on Ronchetti. "He's got good style," Hawk wrote. "And he seems to be comfortable doing the most difficult tricks required to be a serious competitor."

High praise. But which skater is better? "They're both at about the same level," says Danns. "One of them will learn a new trick and pass it on to the other one. They really spur each other on. Skateboarding's a good sport, in that there's a friendly spirit around it. People do try and help each other out. If I had to say, I'd say that, at the moment, Paul-Luc is marginally ahead of Sam. But the pecking order changes every six months. It's great to watch."

It's unbelievable to watch. At Creation Skatepark, in the old bus depot in Moseley, Birmingham, Ronchetti shows off his skills. Having climbed a shaky ladder, he straps on protective undershorts, helmet and knee pads, drops off the lip of the 14-foot half-pipe, accelerates through the dip and shoots off the far lip. At the zenith of his trajectory, 5-6ft from the edge of the half-pipe – that's 19 or 20ft from the floor – Ronchetti reaches a moment where stillness meets frenetic activity, as he grabs his skateboard and performs whichever outrageous trick has taken his fancy. He shows no nerves. If he doesn't

feel he can pull off a trick, he simply "bails", landing on his chunky kneepads and sliding to the floor, his skateboard crashing down behind him.

Having baited gravity for 20 minutes, Ronchetti joins me by the half-pipe with Danns and another member of Team Extreme, the promising 18-year-old street skater Jak Tonge. "I'd like to be a pro," says Ronchetti. "But I'll only do it when I'm ready. Hopefully I'll know when I want to skateboard as a job. At the moment, I just really like the competitions, because you get to ride with all the pros. The big names are quite friendly: they push you on, and give you tips. I do get nerves when I'm skating with them, but the nerves seem to boost my airs higher and help me pull tricks. I think you need nerves."

Ronchetti, like Danns and Tonge, is excited about the prospect of skateboarding becoming an Olympic discipline. All three skaters dismiss the claims of some in the skate community who say that competition ruins their sport. "Anything which gets money into the sport has got to be great," says Tonge. "The Olympics will hopefully mean more skate parks." Danns agrees. "It's got to be positive, hasn't it? What we do takes years to get good at. So if the Olympics can encourage people to start skating young, that's great."

If the London Olympics means more skate parks, it can't come soon enough. At present, Ronchetti and Beckett travel every weekend from Norwich to Creation Skatepark to train. They make this gruelling five-hour round-trip because there are only two competition-level half-pipes in Britain: one in Blackpool, and this one in Birmingham. Luckily, Ronchetti and Beckett both have generous, patient parents willing to ferry them about. Nonetheless, as talented as they are, a single day a week is not going to produce future Olympic champions.

"I'm really loving touring around doing the comps," says Beckett. "That's pretty much what I do every weekend now – I'm away a lot, and skating all these great competitions with great skaters. But the vert skating scene in Britain is not great. There was talk of the skate park in Birmingham closing down recently, but I don't think that's happening now. Hopefully, the Olympics will mean that they'll build some more ramps for us."

Ronchetti and Beckett may be sanguine about the lack of facilities near where they live, and the long trips that have become a regular feature of their lives. But those at the top end of British skateboarding are battling with the Government to inject more cash into their sport. Kevin Parrott, 29, the chairman of the UK Skate Association, is particularly aggrieved. "Here we have two of the best young vert skaters in Europe," says Parrott, "and they are two hours and 45 minutes away from their nearest ramp. If we are going to produce someone who is on the level of the American, Australian or European pros, we need more than what we've got. It's a joke.

He points out that Creation Skatepark – known until recently as Epic – almost closed down when the former owners ran out of money. "If that would have gone, Paul-Luc and Sam would have had to travel six hours to Blackpool every weekend. I spoke to Sam when there was talk of Epic closing, and asked him what he'd do. He said it would be cheaper for him to get a flight and skate abroad every weekend. It's amazing that a 15-year-old kid is that dedicated, but it's madness that he would have had to resort to that.

"It's infuriating, because these kids are active in sport," Parrott continues. "They don't sit in front of the television or the PlayStation. They're trying so hard. But there's no support for them. None of the private skate parks in Britain get funding from a private pot. If someone wanted to start up a park in Norwich, they'd have the same problem that everyone else has had – it's incredibly hard to keep them going just with money on the door."

While the adults wrangle, Ronchetti skates. It's an extraordinary life. During the week he's a normal 14-year-old getting on with school and having fun with his friends. At the weekends, huge crowds watch him compete at major events. Soon, Ronchetti will enter the biggest skateboarding competition of them all, at the X-Games in California, as Britain's only skateboarding representative. That doesn't change anything at home, though. "My friends from home don't really know about what I do," he says. "They know why I've been away. But when I get back from somewhere, they'll just ask me, 'Did you win?' and then we don't talk about it. We don't talk about skateboarding a lot. They're just my normal friends." They must be jealous of the swag he brings home. All his kit is sponsored. He gets skate shoes from Etnies, clothes from Billabong, decks (boards) from Timeline, trucks (wheel connections) from Independent, wheels from Bones. He also receives some money from Team Extreme for any exhibition events he performs in.

Beckett has similar sponsorship deals, and is likewise too busy enjoying himself to worry about the future. "I've definitely considered turning pro," he says, "but I'll keep my options open. I'll just take it as far as I can take it and see what happens. I'm going to do my GCSEs, and then two years at college, but I'll probably delay uni to give [skateboarding] a go. I'll see what's going on. I just love the skating so much at the moment.

"I enjoy skating with people who are so much better than me," he continues. "Sandro Dias, who won at Prague, is the world's number one. I was there, with him. Obviously, I'm not going to win it, so I just go out there and do my best and see what happens. There's no pressure on me. And the more I enjoy it, the better I do. I think in maybe a year or two years, though, I'll be able to take those guys on and have a chance of winning it."

Is there any rivalry between Ronchetti and Beckett? "We're friends," says Beckett. "But there's definitely a little bit of rivalry there. If anything, I think that helps us both, because we push each other on. I think we'd both love to be at the Olympics. It's definitely something to aim for."

Whether the pair can realistically aim for the Olympics entirely depends on the support they get in the coming years. It would be a huge waste of talent if either were forced to quit their sport because our facilities are not up to scratch. It would be doubly shaming for the host nation to miss out on two serious medal chances.

It doesn't have to be that way. Somebody build the boys a ramp.

How big business climbed on board

When 10-year-old Bart Simpson takes on a dare to skateboard naked through the streets of Springfield in The Simpsons Movie you know the sport has returned. The global worth of skateboarding is now said to be an estimated $5bn (£2.5bn) in sales a year, but British advertisers have been slow to pick up on the financial rewards to be found among young, affluent enthusiasts.

Because of the lucrative sponsorship deals for brands of shoes, clothing, and skateboard paraphernalia, US prodigies are now finding themselves at the centre of a feeding frenzy as agents scout out skateparks and half-pipes hoping to snap up young talent.

Two of the brightest stars of the scene are the nine-year-old twins Nic and Tristan Puehse, from California. They are already a global phenomenon. A YouTube video featuring the boys has been watched at least 2.5 million times since it was posted at the start of the year, and they already boast sponsorship from Nike and the sports drinks company Gatorade.

Their father, Michael, started sending videotapes to possible sponsors when they were just six years old. "If they continue to progress like they're doing, there's no doubt they're going to be pro," he told The New York Times.

This is not just fatherly bluster. So skilled are the boys that the California Amateur Skateboard League has created a new division for commercially sponsored skaters aged 10 and younger.

There are already 11 million skateboarders in America. And according to market research by the company Board-Trac, 43 per cent of them are aged between 6 and 11. For the youngsters who stick with it, the financial rewards are staggering. Ryan Sheckler, now 17, won his first X Games gold medal four years ago. He now earns nearly half a million dollar a year with sponsorship on top. And Nyjah Huston, who was only 11 when he first took part in the X games last summer, has since earned tens of thousands of dollars in prize money.

It's all a bit worrying for Sonja Catalano, of the Skateboard League, who began organising skateboarding events 28 years ago with Frank Hawk, father of the skateboarding megastar Tony Hawk.

"We didn't used to have any parents," she says of the huge surge in parental involvement in the business. "That's what drew a lot of kids to skateboarding, and that's what drew a lot of kids to skateboard contests in the first place. It was their thing," she says. All that has changed.

Skateboarding was about rebellion when it started out on the LA sidewalks of the 1970s. A rite of passage for any youngster was being chased out of a shopping mall by a security guard, or better still, the cops. Soon they were emptying stranger's swimming pools in the middle of the night to use the pool as a half-pipe.

The prize-winning author Bret Anthony Johnston was one of those early rebels who went on to become a professional skateboarder. "Skateboarding is now what Little League was ten and 20 years ago' he says "and its unprecedented popularity and commercialisation may soon be its undoing.

"Essentially, skateboarding is an enterprise of nonconformity. Skaters have always been one step removed from mainstream society, so when the masses try to consume – and profit from – skateboarding, the sport has to reinvent itself, to revert back to its fundamental and simple state."

That may be some time away, to judge by the parents and talent scouts who now turn out to skate-boarding competitions. All want to sign someone like 8-year-old Drake Riddiough, who was picked up by Jason Crum, of Half Pint Skateboards in California, and who is now one of eight sponsored boarders and the envy of the skatepark.

Such is the hype that Crum says he keeps fending off youngsters and parents seeking sponsorship. "The majority of the damage control I've had to do as a sponsor of little kids is avoiding some of the parents," he says. "Whenever I come back from a road trip, I always come back to a couple of jaded emails."

Peter Townend, a former world surfing champion, whose son is a top skater, says: "Without good advice, you just get eaten alive by all these sharks swimming around in the water."

Things have improved for skateboarders over the years. Unlike Britain, where skateboarding is still considered a minority "hobby", millions have been spent on the sport in the US. Countless free municipal skateparks have been built, allowing young children to spend hours skating, with-out terrifying pedestrians.

"As is always the case, in this country, commercial success has legitimised the sport, and made it palatable and viable in a capitalist society," says Bret Johnston, whose book Corpus Christi: Stories was named Book of the Year in The Independent two years ago.

He points out that many skaters from its last heyday have gone on to become artists, physicians, mathematicians. "I have faith in the individual skaters and the sport as a whole," he says "So many of them still skate, that I'll be very curious to see who's still on the ramp in 20 years."

Leonard Doyle

How to speak Skate

Air

To 'air' is when the skater and board leave the ground during a trick. It also refers to how high a skater goes during a trick: 'He got big air'.

Deck

The main platform of the skateboard. It is usually covered in a rough surface called grip tape, which gives the skater more control over the board.

Fakie

Going backwards.

Fat

Can mean high or far, but is also used to describe something good. An alternative spelling is 'phat'.

Gleaming the cube

Pulling off a seemingly impossible trick. Also the name of a cult 1989 skate movie starring Christian Slater.

Goofy

A skater who rides with his or her left foot towards the back ('tail') of the board. The alternative is 'regular,' when the left foot is at the front ('nose') of the board. The terminology is used for snowboarding stances as well.

Half-pipe

Two concave ramps joined together on which skaters perform airborne stunts. Originally, half-pipes were actual half-sections of a large pipe.

Handplant

A kind of handstand where the board is held in the air by a hand or by the feet.

Indy

A kind of 'grab' where a skater holds onto the board between his or her feet. An indy is the most common grab in both skate- and snowboarding.

Kickflip

Flipping the board by using the feet in the same way as when kicking something.

Ollie

A fundamental move where a skater gets 'air' without using the hands. It essentially involves performing a jump while keeping both feet on the board.

Shove-it

When a skater turns the board without turning his or her body.

Stoked

Pleased.

Trick

The generic term for a skating manoeuvre.

Truck

The metal device that holds the wheels to the skateboard. Each board has two trucks.