Lizzie Armanto

By Erika Houle

Photographed by Anthony Acosta, Alex Papke, and Sam Muller

 

In October 2020, I emailed Lizzie Armanto about a project focused on the resilience of the California skate community. Several months deep into the pandemic, amid the wave of anxiety leading up to America’s presidential election, she and nine other generous skateboarders agreed to write postcards to family, friends, and beloved mentors. To share words of encouragement and warm reminders that keeping connected can be its own form of medicine. Armanto’s mail was addressed to her late friend and skate legend Jeff Grosso, including updates that were nothing short of uplifting: A few weeks earlier, she and her partner Axel Cruysberghs got married in secret, which they quickly realized was far more fun to share. “I’ve been making choices for myself,” Armanto wrote, “and doing my best to grip a little less tight on the things that are out of my hands.”

While photos from her marriage were no longer under wraps, on the same day that she posted them to her Instagram, Armanto began privately processing another major life event—an injury so unimaginable that Tony Hawk would later equate it to the result of experiencing two car crashes, back to back.

Sitting across from Armanto on the patio of a diner in Los Feliz, 15 months (and counting) in recovery from a broken femur, multiple fractures, and three shattered spine wings, the 29-year-old pro skater appears impossibly put together. She’s sporting trousers and a crisp, cropped jacket, sipping on the green drink she showed up with, and her energy is as unshakeable as her fresh electric blue dye job. Scanning a book-length menu loaded with milkshakes and curly fries, Armanto decides on water in a matter of seconds. It’s not because she doesn’t love good grub—from making meticulously-decorated brownies to participating in Flamin’ Hot face-offs, Armanto is fervent about food as more than fuel. To put it in skate terms, she just follows her gut, which only becomes more obvious as our conversation continues. Finding a good physical therapist, for instance, she describes as “seeking out the right ingredients from all the best places—by word of mouth.” The process of designing her own pro shoe is likened to “getting into the kitchen and figuring out what you want to cook with.” As for her review of the last year and half in general? “It kind of mashed potato-ed together.”

Nothing about Armanto’s life as of late brings to mind a pile of soft beige fluff. By the end of 2020, though, like many of us, she was emotionally exhausted, physically drained, and mentally maxed out: “At every channel in my life, I felt like the volume was turned up to 10.” She was working on ads for Vans in her backyard while simultaneously battling relentless migraines. Adamant about taking some time to rest, Armanto caught wind of Transworld’s new “Skate and Create” contest. It was the first time since filming their video Saturdays that she and her Birdhouse teammates had all been reunited, and everyone was “stepping up and doing something really gnarly.” She couldn’t defy the urge to push herself in her own way: attempting to skate the mega ramp—originally conceived for BMX, it called for a style of skateboarding that she’d never tried before. On that day, Armanto was in so much pain that she had to leave the scene early. She didn’t make it home without having to pull over, throwing up again in her yard before reaching the front door. She felt ruined from the stress of it all. Her vision was blurred. “Cumulatively,” she says, “it was messing me up.”

Less than 24 hours later, Armanto was back at the ramp—standing approximately 25 feet tall, elevated on scaffolding, with a gravel-lined gap nearly 30 feet wide between where she’d take off and where she’d land. The Birdhouse van was suspended above the jump gap. A forklift was required. The whole setup resembled a supersized game of Mouse Trap, wherein the thing itself was the opponent. Cruysberghs was there with her, excited to skate it too. Her best friend, Allysha, also came for support. But she still wasn’t feeling 100%. “The day after a migraine, energy-wise, it feels like a hangover. You’re sick, your body is depleted, you’re passing out. It was the perfect storm for everything terrible that could happen at the worst possible time.”

Armanto went for it. She dropped in and ultimately missed the kicker, launching into the wall of the landing deck and then plummeting to the ground. The next thing she remembers was “kind of blacking out.” She was, in fact, conscious, and knew better than to attempt to stand up or move at all. Armanto tried to remain calm while being asked if she could wiggle her fingers and toes—after a slam and fall to those extremes, checking for paralyzation was the most pressing matter for those around her. Armanto, on the other hand, wasn’t preoccupied with any potentially catastrophic outcomes. No feelings of panic, no fight or flight response, no signs of going into survival mode. More than anything, she was pissed. The first thought that ran through her mind? “Wow, I fucked up really bad.”

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, when Armanto arrived at the hospital, she was completely removed from her support system. Her phone was dying, flooding with congratulatory messages about her newly-announced marriage while her husband couldn’t be next to her. She was beginning to worry about the possibility of internal bleeding from the slams, but focused solely on staying present as she waited to hear more from the doctors. “They weren’t sure what they were going to do. Nobody was communicating. Part of that is liability, but it’s not fun to be a part of in any way.” She tried to trust that her body would just know how to recover, as it had so many times before.

Earlier in her career, one of Armanto’s biggest setbacks was a torn posterior cruciate ligament, a knee injury brought on by immense impact. Less than a year later, she ripped a different ligament in the same knee. There hasn’t really been a time since in which she’s steered clear of scraped shins, ice bags, bandages, or bruised elbows. She’s noticed that doctors and physical therapists are typically excited to work with her, if for no other reason than that she is proactive. “Most people want to achieve a level of feeling okay again, and they don’t get back to where they were. They’re not used to using their body, or really living in their body. As a practitioner, your goal is to help people, and you can only help someone if they want to be helped.”

In the aftermath of the mega ramp, help looked a little different. Prior to undergoing surgery for her leg, Armanto recalls Hawk assuring her: “This is going to be a great comeback story.” Of course, she appreciated the support, but at the time it felt more like irony. She was too deep in the thick of it to know if she’d ever get back on the board at all.

Hawk was correct. Or rather, he was close—a “comeback” doesn’t begin to cover all that Armanto’s achieved over the course of her recuperation. To list a few highlights, in no particular order: traveling to Tokyo to compete in skateboarding’s Olympic debut, buying and renovating her house in Highland Park, directing her first music video, making an appearance in another music video, landing the cover of Macmillan Learning’s Preparation for Calculus textbook, partnering with Vans and Skate Like a Girl to implement equity through skateboarding, becoming a fan favorite character in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 remaster, filming new video parts, picking up film photography, celebrating a year of marriage with Cruysberghs, becoming a new mom to her adorable dog, Alma. “I like to think I chill,” Armanto says. To confirm: she does not.

In 2019, it was announced that Armanto would be representing Finland at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games (she was born with dual citizenship and wanted to free up one of the limited spaces on Team USA for another qualified skater). With the events postponed because of the pandemic, once she realized she’d be able to skate again before they began—well ahead of any doctor-prescribed timelines—Armanto concentrated on getting better without applying too much pressure on herself to perform at her best. The games were not more meaningful to her than the future of her career, and she was at peace with the promise of all she’d end up doing in the long haul.

In some ways, Armanto approached the Olympics the same as any other contest—only, without a live audience, and packed with different rules and regulations. A few too many formalities. She compares the spirit of the competition in skateboarding to that of pop in the music industry: “It’s a big part of it, yes, but also pretty broad and generalized. There are so many other genres, and it doesn’t account for all the ways you can dive in. It’s funny, because you’re representing countries, and people jumping on that bandwagon all of a sudden care about you. Or rather, the idea of you.” It wasn’t until she got home that it became clear just how much the world was really paying attention, and how that could subsequently open new doors for women in skateboarding. She’s eager to see if in the coming years, there will be kids that start skating because they saw it in the Olympics. For Armanto, that counts a whole lot more than medals.

Making an appearance on the world stage posed another important question: What was she going to wear? Armanto had seen other uniforms and thought that many of them were lacking, in the sense that they weren’t representative of what people actually skate in.

She took to the task of putting together her own look with careful consideration—collaborating with Vans and her friend and designer Rachael Finley to make 12 pieces in total, including sets for the coaches. For additional inspiration, Armanto referenced the work of Finnish architect Alvar Aalto: “He was one of the first people that took organic shapes into modern style. That’s how he eventually came up with the kidney-shaped swimming pool.” A nod to Finnish culture and the empty backyard pools she knows and skates so well, Armanto’s all-blue, bean-printed ensembles were something she could wear year-round. What really took the spotlight was the t-shirt she wore underneath, which read: “GROSSO’S LOVE LETTERS TO SKATEBOARDING.”

 

Armanto remembers a time in 2013 when Grosso asked her what board company she wanted to be on, despite already riding for Santa Monica Airlines—an iconic skateboard company with a rich history in her hometown (where it’s from), and one of the first skate brands to ever exist. She never really imagined herself leaving. There weren’t many other transition skaters, let alone women, that were on core board companies at the time. With “two strikes” against her, Armanto felt like she could relate most to Birdhouse’s mix of all types of skaters, and with Grosso’s prompting, she put the word out there to all of her friends. Hawk eventually hit her up on Instagram, and she started getting boards and going to vert demos. Five years later, Armanto became the first woman to ever successfully complete Hawk’s legendary 360 degree loop. Turn her upside down and she’ll still correct the course.

These days, she’s committed to getting back in rhythm with her body, finding new ways to feel in sync with her mind. “I know I’m skating at a high level, but there are some tricks I’m struggling with, just because of range.” Her hip still feels guarded, certain muscles remain tight, and, inevitably, it takes a while to build up confidence again. “You have to figure out if that’s being scared and not ready to push yourself,” she says, “or if you’re really just not ready.” Those are calls only Armanto can make. One thing she’s found particularly helpful is giving herself what she calls a “cut off”—if she’s convinced that she has a finite amount of time to reach a new limit, doing so seems more attainable. In her own spinoff of a self-affirmation, Armanto says to herself: “Get a little further on this try, otherwise stop right now.”

As our conversation nears its end, we return to her postcard to Grosso, to the choices she’s been making for herself since writing it. “There’s a part of me that’s so afraid of making goals for no reason in particular,” she says. “I’ve been more responsible, which sounds really boring, but it helps with the chaos.” Looking ahead, perhaps her master plan is as simple as that: to always have one. Where skateboarding was maybe once about going pro, it’s now about maintaining a pace—steadier than ever, and in typical Armanto fashion, she’s found her own.