Many people believe that Ragnaroll is a full-time skater. The man from Barcelona invests a lot of time in skating, filming, shooting, editing, and traveling. After many years in the making, he recently got his first Chaya pro model. We chatted with Ragnaroll about the challenges of collecting footage for his world tour video, the long road to completing a pro model, broken trucks and why it’s all worth it in the end.
Ragnaroll, in how many countries have you skated so far?
In the tour video seven countries. I used to travel a lot back in the day, but mainly without skates, but countries where I skated in are around 15 in total.
You did not include all of them in the video. Why did you choose these?
I included the countries I visited after the lockdown when I started to film for my pro skate. Only Switzerland and Belgium I left out because I didn’t have good clips, because I didn’t have time to skate. I basically did workshops and even though I included Singapore, I could not film there enough because it rained the day I skated. But I will share some of these additional shots and other shorter videos on Instagram.
Tell us a bit about the background of your skate trips. Did you plan to collect for a world tour edit or did it just happen?
It was never planned to be a tour. When I received the first sample of my Chaya pro skate, I wanted to film outside of Barcelona and we went to the Basque Country (Spain) since we couldn’t leave the country at that time yet (it was during the pandemic, edit notes). The sample was not well made and I could barely film anything. With the second sample I received I traveled to Portugal to film a promo, but again the skates broke because they came with the wrong parts. The third time I went to the US and the boot was correct but the trucks weren’t and they broke during my run at Blading Cup… so in the end I planned a bunch of trips where I couldn’t film a proper promo but got some footage that could be used.
Which spot was the most challenging or fun and why?
The last trick of the video at Amplitude skatepark in Bali, the 50-50 on the ledge to transfer 50-50 on the rail. First because the ledge was pretty long and I had to grind perfectly balanced to not hit the corner of the rail and second because after a few tries that area of the park started to become really crowded with many kids and skateboarders. It was an extremely hot and humid day so it was more of a mental battle to stay focused and keep trying over and over, sometimes waiting around five minutes between tries until I got it.
In those almost three years you probably collected lots of footage. How hard was it to select the clips? What’s your criteria?
I had a lot of footage, but it’s very hard for me to be excited about old clips. So after a while, things that I thought were good were left out and will never be used. I just selected the best tricks and tried to show some variety of places/skateparks. I only left out some clips I liked because the tricks were too similar to others, basically too many 50-50s, hahaha.
For your world tour video, you visited a lot of iconic skate parks. Why did you choose only parks and not street spots?
My official Chaya promo was already a street section so I was looking to skate more parks, since we have great street spots in Barcelona but the skateparks are a lot better in other countries. I love to skate street. But when I travel, the time is very limited so during a day at the skatepark I know I will skate and film all day, while skating street I might end up wandering around and not get ot skate. Also street skating is usually a lot more challenging and dangerous than park, like skating a big rail after a long flight and with a jet lag is not ideal…
On your Youtube channel you state that even as it started as promo filming for your pro boot, “It was all self-funded, with no support from any brands or sponsors, no photographers or videographers, just Johanna (your wife) and myself.” Why is Chaya not a sponsor on this edit which technically is a promo video for the boot?
I included that statement because many times I encounter people that believe I am a full-time skater and make a living skating which is very shocking to me. I don’t want people to have a distorted impression or false hopes about what a pro roller skater is at this point because in my case I never received any small payment from sponsors until very recently.
It was a great experience that Chaya sent Rafa to Barcelona to film my official Pro skate promo and I am extremely grateful for it. But for this video there are no sponsors because no brand supported or funded it. Now there are some cool roller skating projects with big brands investing on tours, photographers and videographers, which is a great thing, but people should know this is not the case. Johanna and I paid for everything, travelled with our own photo and video gear, invested a huge amount of time filming, shooting, editing and so on and I just hope people like the final result.
My skate is finally out and it would be great to recover a little part of what I invested thanks to the royalties of the pro skate, but in the end Johanna and I did it because we wanted and we absolutely loved the experience. We will remember these trips the rest of our lives, it was totally worth it.
The Ragnaroll Chaya pro skate is available worldwide. Check it out here.
Photos by @johisspardo
Interview by @octopolly