Bob Burnquist: The Skater Who Made Switch Look Natural
Share
There are very few skateboarders who can genuinely be described as changing the way people thought about what was possible on a skateboard.
Bob Burnquist is one of them.
For an entire generation of skateboarders, the Brazilian-born professional became synonymous with progression, creativity and, above all else, an almost unnatural ability to skate switch.
For most skateboarders, riding switch means deliberately riding with the opposite foot forward. Tricks that feel automatic in a normal stance suddenly become unfamiliar. Balance changes. Timing changes. Muscle memory disappears. Even basic manoeuvres can feel awkward.
For Burnquist, switch was different.
He didn't simply learn a handful of switch tricks. He developed the ability to approach an entire session, contest run or enormous ramp as though either stance was his natural one.
That ability became one of the foundations of his career.
Laureus once described Burnquist as being famous for his ability to perform virtually any trick regular or switch, while Tony Hawk famously compared Burnquist's switch ability to being better than most people's regular skating.
That is quite a statement.
But when you look at Burnquist's career, it becomes remarkably easy to understand why.
Growing Up in Brazil
Robert Dean Silva Burnquist was born in Brazil and grew up in São Paulo.
Skateboarding entered his life while he was still a child. Sources differ slightly on the exact age—Burnquist himself has recalled beginning around age 10, while the Skateboarding Hall of Fame records him starting at 11—but there is no disagreement about how quickly skating became central to his life.
By his teenage years, skating was no longer simply something he enjoyed after school.
It had become an obsession.
In an ESPN profile, Burn recalled skating constantly after discovering a vert ramp near his home. His dedication became so intense that his schoolwork suffered; he even recalled failing sixth grade after choosing skating over summer school, prompting his mother to take his skateboard away.
That story says a lot about the young Burnquist.
He wasn't someone who casually became good at skateboarding.
He himself in it.
Brazil during this period was not yet the global skateboarding powerhouse it would later become. The international professional scene was heavily dominated by American skaters, and opportunities for young Brazilian riders were considerably more limited.
Burnquist would eventually help change that.
Becoming a Professional
Burnquist progressed extraordinarily quickly.
According to the Skateboarding Hall of Fame, he turned professional at just 14 years old.
But the moment that really announced his arrival to the international skateboarding world came in 1995.
Burnquist travelled to Vancouver, Canada, for the Slam City Jam.
At that point, he was largely unknown outside Brazil.
Then he started skating.
His technical approach to vert skating immediately caught people's attention. He wasn't simply flying high and performing conventional vert tricks. His runs contained switch-stance combinations and technical lines that looked more like they belonged in street skating.
And then he won.
The virtually unknown Brazilian took first place.
TransWorld later described his 1995 Slam City Jam appearance as the moment when spectators witnessed a new era of skateboarding. His switch skating left both the crowd and fellow competitors wondering who this Brazilian teenager was.
The question "Bob who?" didn't last very long.
The Switch Revolution
To understand Burnquist's importance, it is necessary to understand what made his skating different.
Vert skating had historically been associated with huge airs, powerful lip tricks, grinds and aerial manoeuvres.
Burnquist brought another dimension.
He began incorporating entire switch lines into his skating.
Rather than performing one switch trick and returning to his normal stance, Burnquist could enter a sequence from the opposite direction and continue skating as though nothing had changed.
TransWorld described the effect of watching the young Burnquist as seeing vert skating become significantly more technical, with switch-stance lines bringing some of the complexity and creativity associated with street skating into vert.
This distinction is important.
A skater who can perform a switch backside air is impressive.
A skater who can perform an entire run switch is something else.
Burnquist wanted to learn the fundamentals in his opposite stance rather than simply collect individual switch tricks. In a later interview, he explained that he deliberately worked through the basics—rock-and-rolls, grinds and other fundamental movements—so that he could eventually skate an entire section of a session switch.
That approach effectively rewired his relationship with the skateboard.
Instead of thinking:
"I'm skating switch."
Burnquist increasingly approached it as:
"This is just another way of."
That distinction became his superpower.
Why Switch Is So Difficult
For anyone who has never skateboarded, "regular" and "switch" can sound like little more than changing your feet.
It isn't.
Skateboarding relies enormously on unconscious muscle memory.
A regular skater doesn't normally think about which foot should move first when performing an ollie. Years of repetition have programmed the movement.
Switch removes much of that programming.
A simple ollie can suddenly feel strange.
A backside grind becomes a completely different movement.
Approaching a vert wall from the opposite stance changes the visual information available to the skater.
And when you're travelling at enormous speed several metres above the ground, there isn't much room for experimentation.
Burnquist essentially trained himself to make both sides of the skateboard feel natural.
That gave him something very few other skaters possessed:
symmetry.
Instead of having one dominant direction, he could use both.
From Street to Vert and Everything Between
Another important part of Burnquist's story is that he never allowed himself to become exclusively a vert skater.
He skated street.
He skated pools.
He skated bowls.
He skated ramps.
He skated loops.
Eventually, he became one of the defining figures in Mega Ramp skateboarding.
TransWorld's retrospective on Burnquist described his skating as covering virtually every terrain imaginable and every stance.
This versatility was important because it meant that switch wasn't a gimmick.
It was part of a much broader philosophy.
Burnquist wanted to skate.
The terrain was secondary.
The limitations were secondary.
The question was simply:
What can be done here?
The Antihero Years
Burnquist's emergence in the 1990s coincided with a major period of change in professional skateboarding.
He became associated with Antihero and the Hellride crew, skating alongside influential figures from the Northern California scene.
His style was unusual.
He could be incredibly technical, but he also possessed an aggressive, unpredictable quality.
He could skate a huge vert ramp one minute and then appear in a street section or backyard pool.
His skating refused to fit neatly into one category.
That attitude became increasingly important as professional skateboarding itself began to divide into different worlds.
Street.
Vert.
Core skateboarding.
Contest skateboarding.
Mega Ramp.
Burnquist seemed interested in all of it.
As he later explained, he didn't want to be put into a box.
The 2000 X Games Breakthrough
Burnquist's switch ability was not simply useful for demonstrations.
It won major contests.
In 2000, he won the X Games Best Trick competition with one of the tricks that became closely associated with his name:
fakie 5-0 to fakie kickflip out.
It was a spectacular combination of technicality and control, performed on vert at a time when technical vert skating was becoming increasingly important.
But the following year would become one of the defining moments of his career.
The 2001 X Games: One of the Greatest Vert Runs Ever
At the 2001 X Games, Burnquist entered the vert competition already established as one of the world's best.
But he was chasing Bucky Lasek.
Going into the final run, Burnquist was sitting in second place.
Then came his final attempt.
He produced a remarkable run filled with tricks and combinations that pushed the technical limits of vert skating.
The result?
A score of 98 out of 100.
The run was so impressive that Tony Hawk described it as the finest vert run he had seen.
Laureus also records Burnquist's 2001 X Games vert victory among the achievements that established him as one of the world's finest vertical skateboarders.
The significance wasn't just the score.
It was the way Burnquist was skating.
His ability to change stance allowed him to approach sections of the ramp from angles that other competitors couldn't use in the same way.
He could create combinations that effectively doubled the number of possibilities available to him.
The Loop
Then Burnquist took switch somewhere even more frightening.
Around the beginning of the 2000s, the skateboarding world was fascinated by the loop.
A vertical loop requires the skater to travel completely around a circular structure while maintaining contact with the ramp.
The physics are unforgiving.
Speed matters.
Commitment matters.
Timing matters.
And falling can be catastrophic.
Burnquist first encountered the loop at Tampa Pro.
He skated it regular.
Then someone shouted for him to try it switch.
He did.
Burnquist later recalled that he didn't particularly want to attempt it—but once somebody called him out, he felt compelled to try. He landed it despite poor conditions and a ramp that had originally been designed for BMX.
That became another chapter in his reputation for switch skating.
But Burn wasn't finished.
The Loop of Death
For a special event known as King of Skate, Burn requested something considerably more dangerous.
He wanted a loop with a gap at the top.
Instead of simply completing the circular structure, the skater would have to leave the ramp and clear an opening before landing back into the transition.
It became known as the Loop of Death.
And Burn performed it switch.
ESPN reported that he landed a switchstance frontside air across the gap and won the competition, taking home $25,000.
This was more than another impressive trick.
It demonstrated the fundamental difference between Burnquist and many other elite skaters.
When faced with a terrifying new obstacle, his instinct wasn't simply to master the safest version.
He wanted to understand what happened when the obstacle was attacked from the opposite stance.
Enter the Mega Ramp
Then came another technological revolution in skateboarding.
The Mega Ramp.
Massive transitions.
Huge gaps.
Extraordinary speeds.
Long periods of airtime.
It created a new form of skateboarding where tricks could be performed on a scale that had previously been unimaginable.
Burn embraced it.
He later described discovering Mega Ramp skating as opening an entirely new universe of possibilities. The scale gave skaters more airtime, allowing them to perform slower rotations and explore combinations that weren't possible on conventional ramps.
For Burnquist, the Mega Ramp was another puzzle.
And once again, switch became part of the solution.
He became one of the most important innovators in the discipline.
Rather than simply going bigger, he wanted to make Mega Ramp skating more technical.
Switch tricks.
No-grab tricks.
Rotations.
Grinds.
Combinations.
The gigantic ramp became a canvas rather than merely a launch pad.
X Games Dominance
Burnquist's X Games career eventually became extraordinary.
He competed at the Summer X Games from the inaugural event in 1995 through his retirement from X Games competition in 2017, missing a medal only in 2004 during that long stretch according to compiled career records.
His medal haul reached 30 Summer X Games medals, including:
14 gold
8 silver
8 bronze
Those numbers placed Burnquist among the most successful athletes in X Games history.
He also became the first skateboarder to win Skateboard Big Air four consecutive times, extending the streak to five consecutive victories in 2013.
In 2015, he added another Big Air gold and became the first winner of the X Games Big Air Doubles event alongside BMX rider Morgan Wade.
Even after suffering a non-displaced fracture to his left forearm during practice that week, Burnquist continued competing and finished the event with multiple medals.
By then, his career had moved beyond simply being about technical ability.
He had become a historical figure in skateboarding.
The Brazilian Connection
Perhaps one of Burnquist's greatest achievements cannot be measured in medals.
It is the generation of Brazilian skateboarders who followed him.
Before Burnquist became a global star, Brazil had talented skaters but comparatively little representation at the very top of international professional skateboarding.
Burnquist helped change the perception of what was possible.
TransWorld described him as the first Brazilian to truly become a global skateboarding superstar and noted the doors he opened for an entire country.
That influence was acknowledged by other Brazilian professionals.
Rodrigo TX credited Burnquist with helping create opportunities for Brazilian skaters trying to make it internationally. Felipe Gustavo similarly described Burnquist as one of the riders who demonstrated that Brazilian skaters could reach the American and international scene.
In other words, Burnquist didn't just become part of Brazilian skateboarding history.
He helped create its modern international identity.
More Than a Contest Skater
Burnquist's career has always extended beyond competition.
He became known for building enormous skating structures on his property, including a vert bowl, halfpipe, corkscrew/loop structures and Mega Ramp. The Skateboarding Hall of Fame has highlighted the extraordinary backyard setup as part of his continuing experimentation.
He also pursued activities outside skateboarding, including skydiving and piloting aircraft.
That adventurous personality is important to understanding his skating.
Burnquist has never appeared particularly interested in simply repeating what has already been done.
His career has repeatedly followed the same pattern:
Discover something new.
Learn it.
Change it.
Make it switch.
Then find something even more difficult.
The Hall of Fame
Burnquist's contribution to skateboarding was eventually formally recognised when he was inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame in 2010.
By that point, he had already established himself as one of the defining skaters of the modern era.
But the Hall of Fame recognition isn't simply about his contest record.
It is about influence.
It is about style.
It is about innovation.
And it is about changing people's understanding of what a skateboarder could be.
What Makes Bob Burnquist's Switch Skating So Special?
There have been many exceptional switch skateboarders.
But Burnquist's ability stands apart because of how deeply it was incorporated into his skating.
He didn't treat switch as a novelty.
He trained both sides.
He learned the fundamentals.
He used switch in contest runs.
He used it on vert.
He used it in street skating.
He used it on loops.
He used it on Mega Ramp.
And eventually, the distinction between regular and switch became increasingly difficult to see when watching him.
That's the ultimate achievement.
A switch trick is impressive because it looks difficult.
Burnquist's best switch skating was impressive because it didn't look difficult at all.
He made something that should have looked unnatural appear completely natural.
Bob Burnquist's Legacy
Bob Burnquist's career can be viewed through several different lenses.
He was a Brazilian pioneer.
A contest champion.
A vert innovator.
A Mega Ramp pioneer.
An X Games legend.
A Hall of Fame skateboarder.
A technical skater.
A fearless skater.
Perhaps the simplest description is the most appropriate:
Bob Burnquist expanded the vocabulary of skateboarding.
He showed that a skateboarder didn't have to choose between technical and big.
Didn't have to choose between street and vert.
Didn't have to choose between regular and switch.
Didn't have to choose between competition and creativity.
He could do all of it.
And he could do it from either side of the board.
For younger skateboarders, switch skating is often something learned after the fundamentals have already been mastered.
For Burnquist, switch became part of the fundamentals.
That may be his most important contribution.
He didn't simply show skateboarders more tricks.
He showed them that the skateboard had two directions of possibility.
And then he spent decades exploring both.
The Burnquist Lesson
Perhaps the greatest lesson from Burnquist's career isn't that every skateboarder should learn to skate switch.
It is that limitations are often created by the way we approach a skateboard.
If one stance becomes uncomfortable, learn it.
If one direction feels unnatural, practise it.
If one ramp seems impossible, study it.
If something has never been done before, don't automatically assume it can't be done.
Burnquist's career has repeatedly demonstrated the value of approaching skateboarding with curiosity rather than restriction.
From a young skater in São Paulo to a teenage professional, from an unknown Brazilian winning Slam City Jam to an X Games legend, from switch vert lines to switch loops and enormous Mega Ramp tricks, Bob Burnquist built a career around one simple idea:
Don't accept that there is only one way to ride a skateboard.
And that is why, decades after his international breakthrough, Bob Burnquist remains one of the most fascinating skateboarders the world has ever produced.