Quizzical nonnas watched from their balconies as Harry Clarke vomited on the side of a road. 

“I get so nervous on the start line,” the Australian downhill skateboarder said. 

But as soon as he put his helmet on his mind settled.

He was seconds from competing for the men’s world title in downhill skateboarding in Tortoreto Alto, a medieval village on Italy’s east coast.

Less than eight months prior he had broken his leg in an accident that could have cost him his life. 

A series of beeps signalled the race was about to start. 

He pushed off.

“Gravity pulls us down the hill,” Clarke said.

“The slipstream you can get from a rider in front … is very valuable.”

Local kids lined the road, keen to get a glimpse of the four crouched alien figures speeding down the hill at about 85 kilometres per hour.

Old Italian men paused, puzzled as to why they were not allowed to cross the road. 

In about one minute and 15 seconds it was all over.

Less than half a second ahead of his competitors, the 26-year-old from Sydney had won.

Sydney to Hong Kong to Italy

When Clarke was about five his teacher parents moved the family to Hong Kong.

As he grew the city’s mountainous urban landscape proved the perfect setting for an increasingly restless teenager. 

A friend introduced him to downhill skateboarding when he was 14.

“There were a lot of kids my age and younger that were using it to get out of the house and do what we wanted,” Clarke said.

He stacked first try. But he was hooked.

Just a couple of years later he was competing in the Philippines against some of the world’s best.

Since then, the sport has taken him to some of the most out-of-the-way corners of the globe in the pursuit of the perfect hill. 

He has reached speeds of almost 130 kilometres per hour.

He said his parents still come to watch him — when they can stomach it.

“My mum will kind of have her head in her hands,” he said. 

“But they’re super supportive of it.”

Push for downhill skateboarding in Olympics

Clarke was among more than 200 Australians who competed across a range of sports in the 2024 World Skate Games in September. 

Fourteen-year-old Olympic gold medallist Arisa Trew also claimed first place in vert skateboarding, while the Australian roller derby team took silver. 

The championships came hot off the heels of the Paris Olympic Games, in which Australia took first place in both the men’s and women’s park skateboarding.

The Australian Skateboard Racing Association has been campaigning for downhill skateboarding to be added to the games. 

President Zak Mills-Goodwin said he hoped Clarke’s win would help them seal the deal.

“The likelihood that Australia can obtain a medal is quite high,” he said.

Clarke said Brisbane’s Mount Coot-Tha was the ideal location for a race.

He said downhill skateboarding was in some ways a more obvious pick for the Olympics than street and park skateboarding as it was a traditional race with a clear winner.

“And I think everyone … can related to it in a certain way,” he said.

“Every bloke in his ute pulls over when he sees me skating.

“And he’s like, ‘mate, I used to do that when I was a kid. I bombed this hill so fast and I crashed at the bottom into the bins’.”