The women lifting the lid on the wild world of downhill skateboarding

Jenny Schauerte stands out among the tourists and sunbathers of Greenwich Park. A crash helmet perched on her head, she looks out from the Royal Observatory towards the skyscrapers of central London. Knee pads poke through her ripped green jeans. On one wrist she wears a bracelet made of a bent spanner; on the other, a band of lettered beads spells out the rudest word in English.

Schauerte, who is 35 and lives in Innsbruck in Austria, has come to Greenwich to talk about the object of her passions: the skateboard that she cradles in her tattooed arms. The German athlete and graphic designer, who is also known as Jenny Jungle, belongs to a disparate yet growing tribe of free spirits who travel the world to descend mountain roads at speeds of up to 90mph.

Downhill skateboarding is a breathtakingly dangerous sport. Riders adopt an aerodynamic tuck when the road is straight, their arms swept back like a falcon’s wings. To get around curves and hairpin bends without brakes, they throw their bodies into slides, putting one hand down on the road as they drift sideways, like a cross between a snowboarder and a rally car.

Footage from the film ‘Woolf Women: Now or Never’; as well as featuring in the movie, Jenny Schauerte was the co-writer and co-director

Footage from the film ‘Woolf Women: Now or Never’; as well as featuring in the movie, Jenny Schauerte was the co-writer and co-director

On a sloping, tree-lined path through the park, Schauerte demonstrates the art of the slide. Her leather gloves are equipped with inch-thick pucks of hard plastic that are embedded with metal rounds. I stand at the bottom of the hill, where she comes to a stop in a noisy yet elegant blur, sparks flying from her hand as glove meets asphalt. 

Downhillers get their kicks on much more thrilling and dangerous descents. In 2019, Schauerte was hurtling down a mountain in the Dolomites in northern Italy when her wheels hit ripples in the road, throwing her off into a metal guard rail. “I looked down at my leg and it was in the shape of a snake,” she tells me. “My femur came through the skin.”

A sickening X-ray of the break features in a new film that Schauerte hopes will bring new recognition to a niche sport. In Woolf Women, which is touring a handful of UK cinemas this month (and hopes for an international release soon), she and a pack of young skaters drive 10,000km from London in an old camper van to descend previously un-skated roads in the Pontic Mountains of north-eastern Turkey.

The trip goes ahead as planned, just 12 weeks after Schauerte’s crash. The low-budget film is a story about her own journey and recovery. “I started skating because of a passion I got through others,” she tells me the day before a screening at Brixton’s Ritzy cinema. “I would love to pass on that passion, and the feeling of having a community of women doing adrenaline-driven, male-dominated things.”

While accidents can be catastrophic and occasionally fatal, Schauerte is anxious to highlight the lengths riders go to stay safe. They use walkie-talkies and hand signals to alert each other to traffic and other hazards. Nonetheless, part of the sport’s appeal lies in its outlaw ethos — or at least the impression of one. “Where I live in Austria, you go for two runs and for sure someone will call the police because they’re like, ‘Oh my God, this is so crazy it must be illegal’,” Schauerte says. (There are bans in some places, including, I note later at the Royal Parks website, along all but two flat paths at Greenwich — sorry guys).

The downhill skate scene first spun out of the longboard craze of the 1950s, when surfers began riding the concrete tides of Hawaii and California. Riding on shorter, sturdier boards, downhillers prized speed and mountain air above the pavement cruising of their surfer friends, or the ollies and flip tricks of the urban skate park.

The modern era of the daredevil influencer, the GoPro action camera and the drone shot has given new momentum to a niche. In 2019, downhill racing, in which four riders compete in full leathers, debuted at the second edition of the biennial World Skate Games. There is a busy campaign for Olympic recognition after park and street skateboarding made their debuts at Tokyo in 2021. Instagram and YouTube are awash with clips that gain millions of views.

Jasmijn Hanegraef, one of the Woolf Women crew, riding Austria’s Kauner Valley road, a celebrated descent for downhill skateboarders

Jasmijn Hanegraef, one of the Woolf Women crew, riding Austria’s Kauner Valley road, a celebrated descent for downhill skateboarders

Woolf Women, the sport’s first breakout film, shows how riders seek out pristine asphalt with the fervour of off-piste skiers looking for untouched snow. Schauerte says the best roads are long, winding, smooth and quiet, with a clear view of oncoming cars. “Super-fresh black tarmac is actually not good,” she says. “It’s still sticky so it’s hard to break out a slide. You want to wait one or two years.”

Travel, where possible in her camper van, is central to Schauerte’s passion for riding. Her favourite descents include a winding road that drops through the Judaean Desert in Israel to the Dead Sea, as well as Punta Olimpica, a high mountain pass in the Peruvian Andes, and the slopes of Mount Teide, the volcano on the island of Tenerife.

But it all started here in south-east London. Schauerte had been raised by strict parents in a conservative Bavarian village, where she struggled to suppress a rebel spirit that she thinks she inherited from her father. She learned to ski at three, but soon switched to snowboarding. She was also bullied and later developed an eating disorder before fleeing to London to study graphic design.

‘Woolf Women’, the sport’s first breakout film, shows how riders seek out pristine asphalt with the fervour of off-piste skiers looking for untouched snow

In 2014, while researching a multimedia dissertation as part of a design masters about the link between adrenaline and emotion, she came across a small but dedicated UK downhill skate community. A crew in London gathered at Greenwich Park, driving at weekends to little-known roads in west Wales. “They’re so into it,” Schauerte says. “No matter what the weather or if the road is full of sheep shit, they’re, like, ‘let’s do this!’”

What began as a case study became Schauerte’s salvation. She found a dual escape in travel, and in the total focus required to descend at speed. Fearless and poised, she rose fast through the ranks to finish second in the downhill skateboarding world championships in 2016 and 2018. On a road in Vermont, she set her personal speed record of 81mph — all on a board the size of a tea tray. (British skater Peter Connolly holds the skateboarding speed record, clocking 91.17mph in Quebec, Canada, in 2017.) 

In Woolf Women, Schauerte finds peace and love with her crew in Turkey, managing to slide again only three months after her crash. She has had a worse fall since then but prefers not to go into details. “I nearly lost my foot,” is all she’ll say. When she’s out of action with an injury, she gets new tattoos. Her favourite depicts a blackened thistle she found in California not long after a forest fire. “When I took it down to the sea it opened up and released these little dandelion-like seeds,” she says. “It was dark but seemed to be full of magic.”

Nothing replaces the joy or thrill that comes with riding with her friends. In Greenwich Park, Schauerte has now performed half a dozen slides, running back up with her board each time. It’s a tiny, straight hill, yet her eyes shine behind her helmet visor. “This feels like home,” she says, getting out of breath. “I feel Zen. I want to do it 100 more times.”

For updates on screenings see woolfwomen.com

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