The Year I Got SOTY w/ Arto Saari: Obscurity to Legend in 16-months | “If you want to make your mark in skateboarding, you better come out the gates swinging.”
Arto Saari is up there with the best of all time. His story is incredible. Left his mom’s basement in Finland as a relative unknown skateboarder to move to America and film two of the most iconic parts and then win SOTY. Now that’s how you leave a mark on skateboarding.
Sample:
A lot of people are tripping on how fast it’s happening for the pro skaters now, but you went from your mom’s house to having a pro board in California in about 16
months, right?
Yeah, it all happened fast. I was a kid that didn’t speak English. I said goodbye to my mom, dropped out of school and was off to the races. Sixteen months later, I was given Skater of the Year and I asked, “What’s that?” I got on stage and was like, “Okay? Rad.” I was tripping out because I had seen all the pros on video. There was Reynolds; there’s Koston. It was craziness.
It was that two-year period that I was filming for Sorry and Menikmati. It was 16 months of going out every day and every night to film those two parts simultaneously. They basically came out back to back.
Click to THRASHER MAG for Arto Saari’s story on leaving Finland and becoming SOTY less than 2-years later
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