Lacey Baker
“I was really young when I discovered skateboarding. I fell in love with it and the more I learned, the more I wanted to skate,” says 25-year-old Lacey Baker. Skateboarding since age two, Baker is, as Rolling Stone noted, the only out queer woman on the Nike SB team. Impressive, but hardly surprising. At 14, Baker took home the Women’s Skateboard Street bronze at the X Games, and a decade later became the 2016 Street League Skateboarding Nike SB Super Crown World Champion for the women’s division. She’s also received heavy praise from the media: Thrasher Magazine says her “My World” video part “shatters every preconceived notion of girls vs. boys.” Rolling Stone simply calls her “one of the best skaters on the planet.” Now, Baker wants to go to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, though the most rewarding part of the sport for her is not the glory. “The most rewarding aspect of skateboarding is the ability to keep progressing no matter how far you’ve come,” she says. “It’s also helped me find a community of other women and LGBTQ folks that I feel comfortable with; we all connect through skating, and often create bonds that are much deeper and carry far beyond skating.” —GH
What Do You Think?