Olympics, isolation and draft beer: an interview with Mimi Knoop

The coronavirus pandemic has shaken up our lives in so many ways. For the Olympic-hopeful skaters the latest blow (or blessing in disguise) comes with the announcement that the Tokyo 2020 Olympics are officially being postponed until 2021.

We got Mimi on the phone after her daily run to fill us in on all the Olympic updates and offer some advice to contest skaters and skate rats alike. We spoke about her role with USA Skateboarding, what the announcement means for Olympic-hopeful skaters, how she’s dealing with the ‘new normal,’ and ways we can all use this time in isolation wisely.

Hey Mimi! How was your run?

It was actually really good today. It’s strange being quarantined — going out and exercising makes me feel human again. I see other people on the street and I’m like, oh yeah, there’s people out there. It’s definitely a weird period of time.

I feel that. I went for a little skate yesterday and it was so good for my sanity.

Yeah it makes you feel normal again. Like the stuff you realize you’ve taken for granted is so strange during this time. I guess having perspective is one of the positive things to come out of this whole situation. I mean, I miss draft beer so much! I just wanna go get a beer! [laughs]. Oh man.

Bottled beer doesn’t cut it for you?

There’s just something about a cold, crisp draft beer. I like bottled beer too, but it’s just not the same.

Fair enough. How are you holding up in isolation?

I’m ok actually. At first I was kind of a little panic-y but then I realized, I haven’t had a break like this in over 15 years. This is great! [laughs] Like, I don’t have to be anywhere. I don’t have to socialize with anyone. I don’t have to be in any in-person meetings. No expectations. It literally is the first time I’ve ‘stopped’ in 15 years so it’s been a very interesting experience and probably a well overdue pause for me. I am going to make the most of it.

Yeah I’m secretly loving it and kind of scared that it’s going to go back to normal too soon.

I definitely have pangs of that for sure. I think we’ll all appreciate each other a little more when this is over. I think we’ll savor the everyday moments more after this.

I think so too. Let me jump into the Olympics stuff… I have some questions written down for you but to be honest I’m kind of unprepared compared to what I usually would be for an interview. I guess just because I had a lot of questions about the Olympics and was struggling to understand it enough before, let alone now, so I wasn’t really sure where to start.

Welcome to the club! We’re on the same page.

[Laughs] Cool! Well could you maybe start by explaining your role with USA Skateboarding and what that involves?

Yeah, so I am working with USA Skateboarding which is the national governing body for skateboarding in The United States. And what I do is — I actually have two jobs — I’m the High Performance Director and I’m also the Women’s Team Manager/Coach.

So in the High Performance Director role I am basically in charge of all our National team programs — men and women — and I work closely with Josh who is the CEO of USA Skateboarding. We work with the USOPC [United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee] and determine how to best support our National Team skaters with the funding available to us. Once we become more established and have the capacity to bring on more staff, I will help build out an official coaching certification program for USA Skateboarding as well. But for now, our priority is to make sure our skaters have financial support and access to elite athlete health insurance, which is pretty cool — they have really good health insurance available to them. They also have access to other resources from the USOPC ranging from scholarships and grants for college, assistance with accounting and finances, and also courses in entrepreneurship… there’s all kinds of little perks they have access to which I’m actually just now learning about to share with them. So it’s been a learning experience for all of us.

In my role as Women’s Team Manager/Coach I am basically in charge of the women’s street and park national teams for the US. That means really just being an extra arm of support for them, which feels natural — I’ve kind of already been doing that sort of thing for a long time with my other work in the industry. But yeah, just being there to help with stuff like registration for each event, breaking down the Olympic World Ranking System so they understand how it works, helping them determine which contests they should focus on, what strategies they should put into place for those contests (long game, short game), what tricks they should do, and things like that. Lots of stuff!

Nice! So then with the announcement about the Olympics being postponed, does that change your role at all now? How does that impact you?

As of right now, everything is the same. Nothing has changed for me and nothing’s been changed for our team either. Everyone is still receiving the same level of support. I don’t know how it’ll look going into the future. I know there’s a lot going on behind the scenes in terms of, you know, the Olympics were supposed to happen in a few months and now it’s a year from now. So I’m sure that’s going to affect things on a certain level. But yeah, a lot of it just hasn’t really been sorted out or determined. But right now everything is a go, as it has been, with no changes.

Is this likely to have a big impact on the qualification process or is it just going to be that the process to get there is dragged out over a longer period of time?

So for the qualification process, that is up to the international federation which is World Skate. So it’s World Skate’s job to create an amended qualifications system to then publish and tell us all where we need to be and what we need to do. But that hasn’t happened yet so we’re kind of just waiting. We don’t know what it’s going to look like. Obviously they don’t have all the answers either and this virus is going to dictate everyone’s fate in a way, in terms of a timeline. So yeah, we’re kind of waiting on them.

Are there any skaters that have been injured, or maybe thought to be out of the running within the original time frame, that you think might now come through with a chance at getting to the Olympics? For example, didn’t Leticia have an injury that was holding her back from qualifying events?

Yeah, Leticia seemed to have a nagging ankle injury and I don’t know exactly where she was in that recovery. I know the end of last year she was taking some time but I’m not quite clear on when or if she was healed from that. But Nicole Hause is a good example. Nicole had a really weird freak knee injury about a year ago that took her out for the whole season last year and she’s ranked like 50th or something — I can’t remember the exact ranking in the world rankings but she is not close. She’s not in contention right now in her point standing but she’s skating really well and putting the work in now. So someone like Nicole, depending on whatever system they tell us is going into place, hypothetically could make a comeback from that injury. Jordyn Barratt and Brighton Zeuner were also hurt last summer but by doing well in just one event in November (which was the Rio Olympic qualifier), they both bounced back and now they’re ranked 2 and 3 in the US for women’s park.

Really it kind of opens it up — on the street side as well — to possibly some younger skaters who haven’t matured their skating quite yet, but have the potential to do so. So yeah, who knows! I mean a lot can happen in a year. The rescheduling of everything could definitely change things.

There was already a lot of uncertainty around all the qualifying events, timeline and structure of everything leading up to the Olympics. Do you feel like this is going to be extra time to actually have a clearer path or is this just another spanner in the works?

I think this extra time definitely creates the potential to really refine and fine tune this whole thing out. I mean that goes for everyone from the skaters all the way up to the people at the IOC making the decisions. But again, I feel like the virus is going to dictate how much time we really have to work with and that could be a lot of time or that could put us a year from now with no events still and all of sudden we’re back to where we started trying to cram it all in. So I’m not quite sure how it’s going to go. I’m curious to see it unfold. In an ideal world it would be much more balanced, and thought-out, and perfected, and better for the skaters, so hopefully that will happen.

Fingers crossed. Have there been any more announcements since the first one about the postponement?

Tokyo 2020 announced in the last day or so that they’re going to move the Olympics exactly one year ahead. So it’s now July 23rd through August 8th or thereabouts. It’s literally the same timeframe, but just next year. And we weren’t sure about that ‘til today because they told us a few days ago it could anytime. So yeah, they do have dates confirmed now.

I can’t wait until our schedule is all locked in. It’s so nice to have that anchor of “this is when this is happening,” you know. I think everyone really craves that certainty right now.

I guess our entire lives are like that right now. We’re all just waiting to be told what we can do and when we can go back outside.

Seriously! It’s insane! Luckily running hasn’t been affected too much. I can still go run down the street so that’s nice. Just get in exercise where you can and be patient — that’s all we can do.

On that note, for all the Olympic-hopeful skaters, what should they be doing at this time, if anything?

Honestly I think it’s an important time to just take into account personal responsibility and stay at home. Follow your city and state orders. I think it’s super important for our skaters to lead and set good examples for their fans and all the people that follow them. But yeah, do what you can. Skate flatground in your garage. Skate down the street in front of your house. It’s basically the 1990s all over again. This is how I grew up! There’s no skateparks unless you build them. You just skate street, you know. So yeah, welcome to the 90s [laughs].

Maybe with all the flatground skating we’ll get a resurgence of freestyle skaters. It could be a new division in the Olympics.

That’s right! [laughs] I think it’s a good time for visualization and kind of sitting with oneself and figuring out what your goals and wishes are for your life. I mean it’s not often that the pause button gets hit like this — and it’s not ideal, no one wants to sit at home and do nothing — but it really is a good time for introspection I think.

I couldn’t agree more. Well I’ll let you get back to that. Thanks so much for taking the time to chat, Mimi!

You’re welcome. And whenever we’re able to hang out again in person, let’s get a beer!

I can’t wait!

Interview: Sarah Huston