31st Southeast Asian Games - Hanoi 2021

Step Inside Margie Didal’s Secret Training Facility In The Philippines

Margie’s story is an incredible one. From starting out skating around the densely packed streets of Cebu city in the Philippines aged just 12, she has enjoyed a stratospheric rise and in so doing she has raised the profile of skate culture not just in her home country but the entire region.
Contest victories at the Asian and Southeast Asian games in 2018 and 2019 respectively turned Margie into something of a national hero- even as Cebu’s only skatepark, ‘Concave’, was closing down. Forced to practice at the picturesque but limited terrain underneath the Pahara bridge in neighbouring Mandaue, Margie’s ability to work on new moves was then further curtailed by the 2020 global pandemic which forced many Asian cities into total lockdowns.
Her solution was to build a small private training facility where she could dial in her technique with a view to setting the global women’s contest circuit alight.
The plan is to use her new profile in a country which idolises sporting heroes to create a permanent indoor public skatepark in order to nourish that groundswell of interest in skating which her success has helped create. All this, it might be added, before even her 21st birthday.
To celebrate that occasion, Margie allowed us to swing by and check out her training facility, where we took the opportunity to catch up with her about the twists and turns of her life story right up to this very unusual juncture in time.
Go Margie!