L'Équipe magazine gives fingerboarding five pages
Seeing fingerboarding in the pages of L'Équipe magazine is the kind of news that is welcome when you have followed this small scene for a while. Issue 2287, dated 5 to 11 August 2026, devotes five pages (48 to 52) to it under the title “Juste deux doigts” (“Just two fingers”).
The reportage was shot at the end of April 2026 at the Finger Skate Contest in Soorts-Hossegor, in the Landes. The text is by Nicolas Herbelot, the photos are by Christophe Berlet, and the cover photo is by Sébastien Leban.
The piece features several familiar figures in the scene: Renaud, aka Rusty Peio, one of the three people who run the Finger Board France account; Hector, a student from Bordeaux who makes three or four boards a week for his brand Die Trying; Lugh, 14, who came with a park he built with his own hands; and Bruno Gradel, who presented Sk8art mini-parks that each take between 40 and 60 hours of work.
The magazine also gives the floor to Damien Bernadet, presented as the French pioneer of the discipline, with 30 years of practice and the Close Up brand since 2007. The line the magazine highlights stuck with me: “Le fingerboard, c'est le piano des board cultures” (“Fingerboarding is the piano of board cultures”).
Personally, I like that the paper shows the craftspeople, the kids and the park builders alike. That is exactly what makes this community so rich. The brands mentioned (Close Up, Die Trying, Otter) are all listed in the French fingerboard brand guide on fingerboard.fr.
Source: fingerboard.fr
The reportage was shot at the end of April 2026 at the Finger Skate Contest in Soorts-Hossegor, in the Landes. The text is by Nicolas Herbelot, the photos are by Christophe Berlet, and the cover photo is by Sébastien Leban.
The piece features several familiar figures in the scene: Renaud, aka Rusty Peio, one of the three people who run the Finger Board France account; Hector, a student from Bordeaux who makes three or four boards a week for his brand Die Trying; Lugh, 14, who came with a park he built with his own hands; and Bruno Gradel, who presented Sk8art mini-parks that each take between 40 and 60 hours of work.
The magazine also gives the floor to Damien Bernadet, presented as the French pioneer of the discipline, with 30 years of practice and the Close Up brand since 2007. The line the magazine highlights stuck with me: “Le fingerboard, c'est le piano des board cultures” (“Fingerboarding is the piano of board cultures”).
Personally, I like that the paper shows the craftspeople, the kids and the park builders alike. That is exactly what makes this community so rich. The brands mentioned (Close Up, Die Trying, Otter) are all listed in the French fingerboard brand guide on fingerboard.fr.
Source: fingerboard.fr
Comments 0
Leave the first comment, in any language.
Log in to comment