I noticed Daniel at the “roller skating rink” in Hamburg. I think he was 12 or 13, but you could clearly see that he had a lot of potential. On the one hand, I was in a dilemma, as I don’t think it’s good to sponsor skaters who are too young straight away, but on the other hand, I wasn’t the only one in Hamburg with a skateboard company and Daniel would definitely be the focus of the other companies too. Morphium also needed a younger driver in the team so as not to lose touch with the younger generation. So I decided to just knock on his door.

Fortunately, Jan (Wittke) and Peer Boysen were already in contact with Daniel and often went skating with him. I spoke to them about Daniel and they wanted to arrange a meeting with him and me. Daniel was quite a shy and quiet boy, so I ended up meeting up with Daniel and Jan. After getting to know each other, Daniel made it clear in conversation that he was interested in driving for Morphium, which saved everything. He was 13 and the first rider to get all his stuff for free right from the start.

I was hoping that the sponsorship would give him a good push and that he would move forward quite quickly. Unfortunately, things turned out a little differently. Nowadays, there are a lot of other activities for younger kids besides skating, where skateboarding can quickly lose its appeal and other things are more interesting. It was similar for Daniel and “playing FIFA” captivated him. However, the other skaters around him also stopped skating, which meant he no longer had anyone to skate with regularly. This has made the priorities from skateboarding to FIFA a lot stronger.

This meant that Daniel wasn’t really active skating for a long time and I had to listen to a few kids here and there asking me why Daniel was still on the Morphium team if he wasn’t skating anymore. Those were valid questions, of course, but I still saw the potential in Daniel and had hope that he would come back to the skateboarding movie. Morphium’s passivity didn’t really cost him anything either, as he didn’t pick up any boards during that time. Nevertheless, this couldn’t remain a permanent situation, and shortly before I wanted to talk to him specifically about it, he suddenly came back to my camp and said of his own accord that he was up for it again and wanted to get going. It has worked well so far and I am glad that I had the patience back then.

I am still firmly convinced that he has a lot of potential and that this is far from exhausted. I hope that Daniel comes out of his shell even more and that even more people can see his skills.