Interviews

Away Days Quiz: Gustav Tonnesen

Just hours before adidas’ highly anticipated Away Days film hit Europe, we caught up with one of our favourite riders from the adidas’ team (which in fact is basically made up of many of our favourite riders): Norwegian tech/style/finesse wonder-boy and Sour pro, Gustav Tønnesen for a little Away Days quiz…

Hey Gustav, how have you been? How has filming for Away Days been working out for you?

It’s been great. I’ve been traveling a lot!

Seems that’s been a the theme for Away Days: Traveling loads with a tight crew of homies.

Yeah, that’s the Away Days spirit. I’ve only been filming on tours.

How many tours did you go on altogether? How much time in the last three years did you spend abroad?

Well, I got on adidas about half way through the filming for Away Days. So I didn’t go on all tours. However, I’ve at least done ten in the last two years. So I’ve got to go on a good amount of trips…

Was there any particular thing that stuck out, that made Away Days trips different from any other skate trips you go on?

Well, I would say any skate trip is great, for different reasons; you get to go to amazing places just to skate…! If I’d have to chose one that stood out from the adidas trips it would be China. I mean, I also went there with Sour, for a whole month even. But that was Shanghai. Now we went to Shenzhen. We had a private driver this time around who would pick us up at our place every day. With Sour we took taxis every day which can really turn out complicated – if you’ve ever been to China, you will know what I mean. It’s always super hard to communicate with people, let alone explain where you want to go. So this time, we had a driver and a good guide as well. He would talk to the driver and make sure we’d get to all the sick places. So these two would wait for us in front of our hotel every morning – very convenient! Very organised…

…very German? (laughing)

Was there any item that was a must on all of your Away Days travels?

Good headphones on flights! So much time spent on airplanes! Otherwise nothing special; just skate sessions, all as usual.

So do you carry some posh noise reduction ones or just usual headphones?

Just regular ones. I don’t really have any special gear, no boom box or anything.

Right, so you haven’t tapped into the “noise reduction headphones wearing jet-setter” type of skate pro. Thought you did… maybe you need to step it up, Gustav… (laughing)

Did you know about Mark Johnson and Daewon Song getting on adidas much in advance?

Someone told me an hour before the LA premiere.

Your skating style is pretty artistic I would say, inspired by the likes of EJP and Sarmiento I would guess. How do you feel about such legends of playful technical wizardry getting on?

Yeah, true, especially Erik is a big inspiration of mine. So yes, of course, it’s amazing! Just witnessing Daewon around on this trip… he’s the best!

Do you think you’ll get much touring with them, do you know what’s planned? Judging from the stuff he puts on his insta and the amount of travels we’ve seen of him over the last decade or so it seems he staying in LA a lot doing his thing, skating parks by himself.

I hope to see him around on tours much. He’s here with us now and it’s awesome to have him. Pretty sure we’ll get to see a lot more of him from now on.

The adidas team seems to be really or organically grown, like a tight group of friends. Do you see MJ and Daewon fitting in?

I think that’s going to fit, no problem at all. At least from my first impression. As I said Daewon is with us here in London and seems super cool. Mark was with us before, he left after the New York premiere and also seemed really nice.

So is this going to be a full-on world tour of premieres? What’s your itinerary?

No, not full-on. We kind of split up from here. I’m going to Paris, then Berlin and back to Barcelona. Some people are going to Tokyo, some to Brasil…

So what’s in the pipeline for you then? Any plans?

No, I don’t really have too much planned. There is another Sour tour coming up, we’re going to drive around Spain. But that’s pretty much it for the moment.

Right, thanks very much Gustav.