Capital City skater chasing Olympic dream

For the 18-year-old, the opportunity to don the green and gold on the world’s biggest stage would be a meaningful achievement. 

Marci’s Olympic journey officially got underway in Rome, Italy, a few months ago at the World Skateboarding Tour which kicked off its qualification process. 

Speaking to SABC Sport, Rodrigues says that after all the hard work, representing South Africa at the Olympics would be a dream come true.

“It would mean so much, after all the work, blood, sweat and tears and then going to skate for your country it’s like the best thing ever,” said Rodrigues

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Rodrigues is currently second in the African rankings, behind Brandon Valjalo. He elaborated on how the ranking system works…

“How the ranking works is – you get a certain amount of points for how good you do at one of the qualifiers, and they will be four to five qualifiers a year in different countries and at the end of each season whoever has the most points in Africa could be in the top 30 basically and gets selected to go to the Olympics.”

Rodrigues won the Best trick award at this past weekend’s Street Lines Skate tournament. He says attempting tricks requires another level of concentration because they can easily go wrong 

The Pretoria-born skater, who picked up skating from his father, also became an ambassador for Monster Energy earlier this year. He says the partnership with the energy drink brand, as well as Vans, has made it easier for him to travel and to compete.

“It’s super difficult, the first few qualifiers that I went to I had to completely fund myself but now with Monster and Vans it’s making it a lot easier.”

Rodrigues says he hopes that in two years’ time, he will be able to look back at the beginning of his qualification journey and say it was worth it.