I always wanted to go fast.
Downhill skateboarding felt quite natural to me.
After that adrenaline rush,
all of a sudden you’re like, “I feel more alive.”
This show is about skating
and talking to skaters about mental health.
We did an episode on how pro skater Ben Raemers' tragic death
sparked a mental health movement
and decided we should let more people talk about
the struggles in their minds.
This film is about one of the world’s best downhill skateboarders,
Jenny Schauerte,
who is part of a crew called the Woolf Women
and has been vocal about her fight against eating disorders
and depression.
She was skating for only one year, but she was already super fast.
Suddenly, she was second-best woman worldwide.
It was like, wow, crazy.
That was pretty epic to see my name on second in the world.
I was in the Philippines.
My phone rang. It was my mom.
And she said, “Hey, Jen, I have something to tell you,
some bad news.”
I felt myself getting less stable.
She kept asking, “Where am I? Where should I be? Where’s my home?”
My eating disorder came back.
If you take skating from Jenny, it makes her sad again.
So what’s worse, when she falls and hurts herself,
or is it worse that she is depressive again?
[SKATING AND TALKING]
We call ourselves the Woolf Women.
People that do the same crazy things
are the ones that really understand you.
Car! Car!
Stop, stop! Sorry!
It’s just so busy.
It’s important, the safety of the girls
because there’s a lot of traffic here.
So... I like to be safe.
OK, it’s clear!
Clear! Clear!
You have to be very focused
because if you miss a car or something,
it’s the life of your friend.
You’re a little bit scared, of course.
But then when you get to the bottom, you’re like,
“Ahh! Oh my God! Let’s go again.”
You really have to be in the moment.
There’s nothing else around you that matters.
It’s just you going down and the board,
and that’s it.
That’s why I think it’s really healing.
Because you have nothing else to think about in that moment
because if you do, you’ll probably crash.
So if I don’t feel good,
I know that skateboarding will help me.
I just need some fresh air, to go fast on something.
Those are the things that makes you feel alive.
She was never the type to go hiking a lot.
That’s not Jenny.
She always wants fun and action.
So she always needs a board under her feet.
Yeah, she needs the adrenaline, I think.
Go get it. Go get it.
I love this guy.
I was about six years old when we moved here.
We were the foreigners,
so it was a little bit difficult to integrate.
I remember when I was in school,
all the girls, they always found a group of girls
to then pick on one of them,
and I was usually one of them.
I don’t know, I really felt judged for my creativity and my weirdness.
I was bullied, basically, when I was young,
and that didn’t feel good at all.
Like, of course not.
Look, that’s mom and dad in Austria.
It’s so cool. It’s old school.
So old. I mean, those glasses are on-trend right now.
In one winter, we went to Arlberg, to St. Anton.
I think that was the first time I really realized, “Oh my God,
I think there is a big problem,”
because she started going to the toilet after every dinner.
And I followed her,
and I knocked on the door and said, “What’s going on?”
And she’s like, “What?” “What’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on. Everything’s cool.”
But I realized, “No, that’s not normal.”
So at some point, I started talking to my parents.
I said, “Can’t you see, she has a big problem?
We have to help her.
She's going thinner and thinner,
and I’m really scared about her health.”
I didn't learn to talk.
That’s one thing in our family which was something we never did.
Emotions were sort of pushed aside a little bit.
I didn’t know how to handle myself at all.
And nobody tells you, you know?
You have to figure it out yourself.
When I was 20, 21 years old,
I had a sort of, I don’t know, emotional breakdown.
I was alone with all these emotions.
It made me feel so bad that I didn’t want to wake up,
I didn’t want to eat,
I didn’t sleep either.
I was so full of emotion.
At some point in the middle of the night, I called my mom,
and I said, “Mom, I’m not good. I need help.”
She said, on her own,
“I really need help because I don’t want to live anymore.”
I went to an institution,
trying to figure out what’s going on with me.
Actually, just the fact that someone decided to help me
and put me somewhere where someone looks after me
made me feel better.
Right after that, I decided to go to London
and have a new start away from the voice there
saying what you’re supposed to do,
what’s the correct thing to do.
I had to go and figure out me:
Who am I? What am I doing?
Why am I feeling like this?
It wasn’t easy at all.
I was a bit lost, in the beginning especially.
They accepted me at Central St. Martins,
which was pretty cool.
I started writing my master thesis about adrenaline
and how it can influence our emotions.
And I was looking at different sports,
and I found downhill skateboarding,
and I was like, “What the fuck?
This is crazy. I didn’t know people do this.”
I thought, “OK, I need to at least try this if I write about it,”
so I went to one of the little backstreets in Greenwich Park.
It wasn’t a steep hill or anything
but enough to get some speed on the board.
I did a bunch of runs where I just fell on my face,
crashed a lot,
and then I did a slide after 20 tries or something.
And that feeling was a super good feeling,
and I thought, “OK, I need to do this more often, I think.”
I started going to races because I started getting better and faster,
and I definitely started reaching a level that I could say,
“OK, I’m faster than others
and I’m better than guys even sometimes,” you know?
I don’t remember the first video I saw,
but I remember my reactions, like,
“This is crazy. It scares the shit out of me.”
We were always in worry that something might happen.
It frightened me.
Of course, we were worried,
but it’s Jenny, who can stop her?
Ladies and gentlemen,
this place is ridiculous.
I explored the world,
not only my own inner world
but also the world.
She traveled a lot.
Holy fuck.
At some point, I didn’t know where she was on this planet.
We traveled to Asia, to South America, all over Europe.
Then she was back to London, working a little bit,
earning some money, and then flying again.
This one is from Peru.
This was in Italy.
This one, I think, is
I think it’s in Brazil.
Don't even remember where this was.
At some point, I managed to get second world champion,
2016, actually, and 2018.
Suddenly, she was second-best woman worldwide.
It was like, what? Wow, crazy.
I was proud of her, of course.
I was proud of her, and I told her.
That was pretty epic.
To see my name on second in the world best female rider was pretty cool.
I was on the way from Indonesia to the Philippines,
and I was staying in a really shitty old room.
And when I woke up, I saw a message on my phone off my sister
that I could please call her back if I see this.
It was the worst moment ever.
At some point at night, we reached her.
My phone rang, and it was my mom,
and she said, “Hey, Jen, I have something to tell you...
some bad news.”
We had the phone in the middle, and I heard her voice, and...
we told her what happened.
And then my mom was like,
“It was your dad,”
and...
the whole world just crashed.
It was terrible because you had to tell her this,
and she was all by herself.
My dad had a heart attack.
He was cycling...
you know, he was fit, he was young.
I couldn’t believe it.
And I was alone in this hotel room.
Jenny, where are the flamingos?
Where are the birdies?
There they are.
When I was back, and everything was just so, so sad,
I also felt myself getting less stable.
My eating disorder came back after two weeks of being here
and all the sadness.
I went back to the Philippines, actually, to skate with my friends.
We didn’t understand it in the beginning why she left.
She especially left our mom alone.
But that was like escaping.
And I know now she just went to the Philippines
because all of her good friends were there,
she could distract herself.
I knew that stepping back on my board
will bring me to good thoughts again,
more healthy thoughts, less destructive.
I started working for a motor sport magazine,
but then after a while, they got bankrupt
and couldn’t pay me anymore.
I kept working and working and thinking, “It will come.”
But it never did, so in the end, he owes me a lot of money.
I was without a home, without money,
and I lost my father too, so I was not in a good place.
I just sort of broke down.
I decided, OK, I cannot afford paying rent in London anymore,
so I left my flat,
and I moved into my van.
I think it was a good choice to leave London behind.
Also, it’s kind of flat, London,
so I thought I’d rather be somewhere next to the mountains
where I can just decide to go and skate.
But it was also pretty difficult, and I felt lonely,
sometimes, just being in the van.
I started driving around, going up the mountains and skating.
I saw all these like-minded girls that skate pretty much my level,
which was like, “Oh my God, this is amazing!
There are some girls around that are like me,
that do the same crazy stuff.”
The Woolf Women are one of the most important things in my life.
The day we met in Belgium the first time,
there was this local skate event,
and then Jenny showed up,
and then another event in Norway, and Jenny was there again.
Somehow we ended up all together in the same place.
The time when I lost my father,
I had a pretty dark time again.
Going traveling with these girls,
it really, really helped me a lot.
And I know that if I would feel bad,
I can always let you girls know.
We can talk about everything.
I feel like you’re always going to be there for support.
You learn that life goes on
and that life comes back, too.
That was one thing that really helped me
get along with losing someone so important.
With mental health,
I think you you need to work on yourself consistently.
The most important thing to do
if you know someone is around you having problems,
struggling with herself
is not to look away.
Start talking with them.
Don’t just pretend there is no problem.
In the end, it’s only you.
It’s just all on you.
You’re the only one who can help you.
That’s one thing you really learn:
I'm the one who can help me the best.