Step inside Margie Didal’s secret training facility in the Philippines

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 neighboring Mandaue, Margie’s ability to work on new moves was then further curtailed by the 2020 global pandemic which forced her city into lockdown.

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 idolizes 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.