Justin Bishop, 38
American
Justin Bishop is a blind American professional skateboarder. He got diagnosed with a condition called retinitis pigmentosa when he was only 8 years old, and apparently he is not the first one to get diagnosed with this condition in his family. Due to the unadvanced science at that time, the doctors told him that he wouldn’t get blinded until he was fifty years old and not to worry about it. So his parents didn’t want to stress him about the future, so they got him into a normal school to be a normal kid.
The Road to Resilience
Bishop spent his entire childhood practicing sports with his brother. That was until his 7th grade year, when the first public skatepark opened up in Vegas, and from then on, everything changed for Justin. He fell in love with the sport of skateboarding at the age of 13. That was until the age of 20, when things started getting serious and Justin got into a car accident because of his bad vision. At that time, Justin was legally blind, but he still sees. He knew that the timeline was getting shorter, so he spent most of his time at the skatepark and skated harder than ever.
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At the age of 25, Justin was skating at the skatepark until everything started getting really hard to see and shadows started to get harder to find, and he started missing rails and started running to people. At that moment, Justin Bishop knew he was getting blind. After losing his entire vision, Justin Bishop found himself drinking heavily and emotionally messed up, but quickly realized that he needed to be strong and chase his dream of skateboarding. Soon Justin Bishop found himself working for his friend, teaching kids how to skateboard. And that’s how he got back into skateboarding.
How does Justin Bishop skate?
Now, when Justin skates, he uses a white cane that tells him directly what’s in front of him. Then I also use something called a beeper box. It’s an audible beeping marker, and he found it because other blind sports use it. He realized that he could use this for skateboarding and that he could set it up at an obstacle to know where he was in the surrounding area. It’s just pretty much a little box that beeps that you can just turn on.
Bishop’s Sponsors
This is a list of Justin’s sponsors:
- Element
- Nike SB
- Independent
- Bronson Speed Co
Find the one thing you love and just hold on to it forever.
