24-YEAR-OLD entrepreneur and respected skater Robert, was born with sacral agenesis - a condition where the lower part of the spine doesn't form properly - or, as he describes it: "My spine is not connected to my hips." Robert's legs were underdeveloped at birth as a result, but he quickly learnt to use his hands to walk around and climb up and down to reach things. As he told truly: "It was definitely very important to figure out ways to be independent, who wants to be dependent on others for their whole life?" Growing up, Robert was offered wheelchairs and other mobility aids, but when he was "about 3 or 4" he tried a skateboard for the first time and that quickly became his means of moving from A to B more quickly. Robert has learnt to deal with people staring at him - and he admits that when he was younger "it affected me a bit more." Nowadays, though, he is able to "block it out" and puts that down to the self-confidence he has developed over time - something that his girlfriend Shani was attracted to when they matched on a dating app last year. She remembers her first impressions of Robert being "very charismatic, very outgoing, very sure of himself" - qualities that proved to be instrumental when he met her parents for the first time. Shani's dad was initially "very worried" because he thought his daughter would have to be Robert's "carer", but it wasn't long before he saw that Robert didn't need help from anyone. And that steely determination has led Robert on a journey to the top of the adaptive skating world, where he has found an outlet for his "very competitive" streak. After only going to a skatepark for the first time in 2018, he was immediately hooked and now frequently competes with able-bodied skaters. Friend and renowned skater, Damian, has skated alongside him in competitions and has seen first-hand how "he's always smiling, always pushing... Which is inspiring for me." With five years of skating now under his belt, Robert recently travelled to Los Angeles for his first ever adaptive skating competition, where the best disabled skaters from all over the world converged on famous skatepark The Berrics. Robert placed second - a result he was "pretty stoked" with - but it seems the best is yet to come if his philosophy is anything to go by: "Don't be lazy, don't make excuses for things you have no excuse for. Be hard on yourself 90% of the time, because if you're not the hardest person on yourself you're not really going to get anything done."

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