Meet Brett Lorenzo.
This is his story:
I grew up on the Gold Coast, Australia aka straya and started skateboarding when I was 13.
At 16, I had to have a knee reconstruction which took me out for around a year and a half then after 3 years of skating i was finally back to skating handrails when I found out I had no ACL the whole time. This took me out again. I still wanted to be around my mates and the culture so I started filming everyone, this lead to more opportunity with festivals and music.
I got involved in electric skateboarding through filming the traditional skate team for FiiK skateboards. Daniel Quinn gave me a FiiK Street Surfer to get comfortable filming on and I became addicted to trying to push the boundaries of what could be done on it. It gave me a taste of limitless possibility and still to this day I’m learning new stuff every time I ride that board. I also created some of my own tricks: The grass hopper & Hurricane Lorenzo
Check out the first video I made on the Street Surfer.
(https://youtu.be/uEkuELzsii0)
A year or so later I helped create, design and do prototype testing for the Mini Fiik and brushless off road boards. I pushed those boards as hard as I did the street surfer. The result was the first ever documented 360 flip, front lip slide, hand plant, blunt fakie and heaps more traditional skateboarding tricks https://youtu.be/Kg6erJVLSTc
At the time there was a lot of hate towards electric skateboarding from a lot of core skateboarders. Due to this and my history with skating and filming I created the page @electricskateboarding (Instagram page) as a way to express myself and what was happing in the world of electric skateboarding.
Without realizing it at the time I’d created one of the first electric skateboarding community pages. I think what we (Fiik) did helped break down the barrier between traditional skateboarding and electric by having a core skate team and mentality, showing the skate community what is capable on them and how convenient the electric boards are as a form of transport.
I kept riding for years, enjoying the journey and encouraging others to do so too. I’ve always let people ride my board when they were interested and for a few years I worked for Fiik letting people experience the feeling of an electric skateboard for the first time. I've taught all walks of life from babies (mine) to an 85 y.o women who was telling me how much she used to shred back in her day. Thanks to Gold Coast Skate Board Coaching I also spent many good years teaching people how to skate and that’s what it’s always been about for me, getting more people involved seeing that excitement when people are experiencing something new.
Pushing boundaries and documenting my friends doing the same led to many videos and almost as many hospital visits. I could ramble on for days with stories of crazy situations or things I’ve done just for the thrill. I rode paddles for many years but after countless high-speed head injuries and ripping my face off a couple times I felt it was a good idea to put a helmet on. Experience in skateboarding and board sports will always help, but dangerous situations lurk in places you least expect them when you ride electric boards. I have to say thanks to Nobleman for supporting a safer way to ride.
I have experienced a lot of hate from people who where ambassadors for major brands and people who started accounts like my eskate page. I’ve almost given up on electric skating a few times from so much negativity, but thanks to those good people in the community helping me see clearly, I let that negative energy turn into fuel to burn my fire to push harder and faster. Its always been about trying to create videos that are timeless and I feel this is one of them
(https://youtu.be/bGkayQ_bMXo)
This video was about doing tricks I thought were impossible on an electric board.
Thanks to the crew who reminded me anything is possible
Stay safe out there.
Tag @electricskateboarding in your adventures so I can keep the hype alive.