“I ditched my career as a nationally ranked track star to become a professional roller skater”

I was born and raised in Brampton, one of seven siblings. When I was 10, my older sister saw a photo in the local newspaper of a young runner in the starting blocks. She held the paper up to our dad and said, “I want to do this.” Being the eager younger brother, I did everything my sister did, so I started track and field too.

Our dad was our first coach. He trained us intensely, every day except Sunday. From the beginning, my goal was to earn a full-ride scholarship to an American university and compete in the Olympics. I attended St. Edmund Campion, a Brampton high school known for its athletics. Track was my singular focus—no parties, no holidays and no other sports. My main event was hurdles.

At my last high school meet, my friends and I made a casual bet: we’d all try a new event, and whoever did best would get $20 from the others. I chose long jump. There were 40 people slated to jump, and I was up first. I ran down the runway, happened to plant my steps in the right spot and leaped. You’re supposed to land on your butt, collapsing into the sand, but I landed on both feet, standing upright, and walked away. The official measured the jump and gave me a weird look, then measured again. I’d broken two local records on my first-ever jump.

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I was already signed to the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, a small Division 1 historically Black school, on a full ride for hurdles. The university didn’t even have a jumping coach. Although I kept training for hurdles, I wanted to focus more on long jump, but I basically had to coach myself, studying videos of the greats. Near the end of my second season in Maryland, I won the Canadian nationals for long jump. I was ranked nationally in the States too. But I knew I’d need to find a mentor to keep improving.

It was a convoluted legal process to get released from my contractual obligations to the school, mostly because the athletics department didn’t want to let me go. Stuck in a non-compete limbo, I returned to my childhood home in Brampton. Months later, I was sitting in my bedroom when I got a call from an unknown number. It was Carl Lewis, a nine-time Olympic gold medallist—like the Michael Jordan of jumpers. Lewis wanted me to train with him at the University of Houston. He managed to get me released from my contract.

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I spent two seasons training for long jump with Lewis in Houston, where I flourished as an athlete. I jumped 8.14 metres, the fourth-best jump in Canadian history at the time. I won the Canadian nationals for the second time. And I was a contender for the 2020 Olympics. When I graduated, in late 2019, with a degree in psychology, my plan was to go pro as a long jumper. Then Covid hit, and I learned I’d need to return home to Canada in order for the Canadian Olympic Committee to keep funding my training.

Back in Brampton, I had to spend two weeks in quarantine—the first time I’d ever sat still in my life. I didn’t know what to do with myself. As a kid, people had called me the Energizer Bunny, and for 15 years, I’d put it all into track. To be stuck in my bedroom at what should have been the peak of my career was an existential crisis. One day, in my boredom, I started rummaging through my family’s garage. At the bottom of a bin full of too-small inline skates, I saw a pair of ancient roller skates with gold leather boots and old yellowed laces. They belonged to my dad—and they fit me.

Despite my inexperience and the cold March weather, I started skating. Slushy, salty, snowy, it didn’t matter—I skated every single day, sometimes all day. I’d hit a trail or find a spot in the city to groove with my music. At first, my skating was wild and unrefined. It was less linear and meticulous than the activity I was used to, more gyroscopic and improvisational. But, because of my stamina from track, I was able to improve quickly. A month later, I bought my own skates and committed to a challenge: to post a video of myself skating every day for the next 365 days. As my passion for skating grew, so did my online following. After I bought my own skates, I refurbished my dad’s pair and returned them to him for Father’s Day.

It was months after quarantine before I was able to resume in-person training with Team Canada. Once I did, my schedule quickly became unsustainable. I’d wake up at 5 a.m. and spend half my day at York University’s athletic facilities, running drills and lifting weights. Then I’d go skate. At home, I’d stay up editing videos late into the night, finally sleeping at 2 or 3 a.m. I basically didn’t sleep for an entire year. In 2021, I went to San Diego for a two-week training camp with Team Canada. In the evenings, I’d sneak away to meet up with other roller skaters and skate the boardwalk along the Pacific. But track and roller skating were detracting from each other. I knew I had to make a choice.

I loved what track had given me—the accolades, the travel—but I’d reached the end of my love for the sport itself. Over the years, I’d accrued a torn meniscus and an osteochondral defect in my ankle. I’d had three surgeries. My clock was ticking, and I was tired. But, when I put on those skates for the first time, it almost felt like breathing. Unlike track, skating had no end goal. There were no medals to win or records to break. It was the first time I experienced self-expression through movement, and I felt liberated.

I confessed this in a heart-to-heart with my friend Cameron Burrell. I trusted him deeply, in part because Cameron was ride-or-die about track—it was all he knew. Both of his parents were Olympic-gold-medal sprinters. He was team captain at Houston, and his dad was head coach. We called our team H-Town Speed City because our sprinters were so good, and Cameron was a star. He told me, “If you feel like skating is calling you, follow that.” When he said that, it clicked. I went to Lewis and my other coaches and told them, “I appreciate everything you guys have done for me. I’ve accomplished a lot. But it’s time for something different.”

Tragically, in 2021, Cameron passed away at 26. I owe him so much, and I have no regrets about following his advice to pursue skating. Thanks to track, I was able to travel, compete at the highest level and finish my degree debt-free. But, when I stopped competing, I didn’t see it as an ending—more like a transference. Track gave me my athleticism, my independence, my knowledge of the world. Now, these things are being expressed in a different form.

For Toronto skaters, Scooter’s Roller Palace, the Mississauga rink established in 1975, has always been home. Our scene is smaller than those of some US cities, but we benefited from the global roller skate renaissance that happened during Covid. Roller skating was so popular that new skates were on backorder and people were waiting months for them to arrive. During the pandemic, when Scooter’s first reopened with limited capacity, there was a line down the sidewalk, and sometimes you couldn’t get in at all. Eventually, I started working there, managing their social media and teaching lessons. I’d spent so long being coached that assuming the role of coach came naturally.

In February of 2022, I went to Columbus for an international skate party, where people from around the world travel to a specific rink to skate non-stop for a whole weekend. That was the first time I was exposed to the full extent of skate culture in person. I was in a rink full of skaters exuding pure passion and skill. Many American cities have their own unique skate styles based on music, developed and passed down over generations from a time when rinks were racially segregated. I’d built my life around skating not knowing that this existed, and suddenly my world became one piece of a bigger puzzle.

The rest of 2022 was a whirlwind. In March, I returned to San Diego to host a party of my own with some of the skaters I’d met during the training camp. From San Diego, I flew to Hawaii. Two of my TikTok followers had raised money for me to spend three weeks skating with the community there. Hawaii opened my eyes to the opportunities roller skating presented. I had always seen track as a path to a better life. I realized in Hawaii that, with the right marketing strategy, skating could offer me that as well.

That summer, I starred in my first big advertisement: a national Tim Hortons commercial. Then, in November, I was invited to London, UK, for a high-profile rink opening where Central Cee and Kaytranada performed. There, I hosted my first formal workshops. Then I started building my brand: Rollstar Entertainment, as in a rock star on wheels. The mainstay of Rollstar is performance. I can do anything on skates—dance, model, act. I perform at events from weddings to bar mitzvahs to concerts, and I appear in ads and music videos. If my clients want multiple skaters, I’ll cast and choreograph other skaters to perform with me. People all over the world have invited me to their cities, rinks and homes to skate. I was flown out to choreograph a music video in San Diego. I’ve modelled in fashion shows in Miami. I’ve taught workshops all over Europe, from Barcelona to Berlin.

In 2023, I was hired to consult on the opening of a new rink in Nairobi, so I moved there for 10 months. That’s where I started to develop my own style called “rollapiano,” fusing roller dance with Afrobeats and amapiano, a hybrid genre of house music that originated in South Africa. Rollapiano is influenced by the dancers I saw in clubs in Kenya. It’s fast and footwork-heavy. I’ll pivot on one skate or balance up on two wheels—minute movements that correspond to the intricate rhythms of amapiano. I also have my flashy moves, like spins. For my signature move, I drop into a split and slide across the floor toward the crowd before rolling back up to a standing position.

No matter how far I travel, Brampton is still my home. I’m grateful to live with my family, and I’m not ashamed to say that I still enjoy my mom’s home-cooked meals. A while back, I was commuting home from a private lesson downtown. Passing through Union Station, I heard a DJ playing Drake and Burna Boy, so I laced up my skates and started dancing. Soon, a crowd formed. We were vibing—until a security guard came up and asked me to leave. That night, I DMed Union Station’s Instagram account to suggest that they update their policy on roller skaters. Instead, they hired me to perform alongside the DJs they hosted.

The following year, Union opened their own free indoor rink for the holidays, and this year, they asked me and my company to provide instructors for it. I still get nervous before every lesson, because I want my students to fall in love with the sport. When I first started teaching lessons at Scooter’s, I had only one loyal student, B. J. Sometimes no one else would show up, but week after week, B. J. was there, steadily gaining confidence. This month, B. J. was my guest instructor at the Union rink. To be part of other people’s journeys—and share the thrill of rolling around together—has made my own even sweeter.