A   few minutes after he had finished skating, Dallas Oberholzer, a 46-year-old from Durban, South Africa, launched into a story about the time he was

Dallas Oberholzer: the 46-year-old Olympic skateboarder who fended off a jaguar

submited by
Style Pass
2021-08-05 16:00:05

A few minutes after he had finished skating, Dallas Oberholzer, a 46-year-old from Durban, South Africa, launched into a story about the time he was nearly eaten by a jaguar while travelling in the Amazon.

“I was driving a little jeep and I got stuck in the mud. I tried putting my skateboard under the wheels but that didn’t work so I was looking for some wood and I walked off and found this little hut down the track.

“There were white droppings outside so I knew there was a meat-eater around and then when I walked in the door I saw this jaguar and oh, shit, this was clearly its lair, so I let rip, roared like some Tarzan crazy man to let the thing know I was something to be reckoned with and luckily it bolted out the back.

“So I just stood there and thought: ‘Oh shit. That thing could have killed me and then: ‘Oh shit, I’m glad I’ve seen it.’ Then I walked 5km to the road to hitch a truck to come pull me out of the mud.”

Oberholzer says he has never had a proper job. But he does have a lot of these stories. He is thinking about putting them down in a book. There is the one about paragliding off Sugarloaf Mountain. And the time he worked as a chauffeur for Janet Jackson. And when he walked into a Zulu village, stony broke but with his skateboard and started teaching tricks to the kids. “They liked it so much they ended up giving me a piece of land. If I didn’t have that I would probably be on the streets.”

Leave a Comment