Katherine Beattie

Hometown: Altadena, CA
Years para surfing: 5 years
Division: Para Surfing Prone
Quiver: 6'8" by Siegelpooh Surf
Things I love: Television, skateboarding, WCMX, vegan food, Dolly Parton 
Instagram: @ktbeattie
Favorite quote: "Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts." - John Wooden
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Growing up in 1990s L.A. gave Katherine Beattie a love for skateboarding and surfing at an early age, but it wasn’t until she started using a wheelchair in her mid-20s that she started actively participating in either sport.

In her first ISA World Para Surfing Championship in 2021, Katherine won a Copper Medal! She was so excited to represent Team USA and help them win team Gold.

Katherine was introduced to adaptive skateboarding through a Life Rolls On event called “They Will Skate Again” where she spent the day skating with Jim “Red Dog” Muir and a bunch of other Venice locals. After that event, Katherine decided she wanted to try skateboarding on her own, so she got the biggest deck she could find, taught herself to skate on her knees and became a regular at Venice Skatepark.

A few years later the folks at Life Rolls On (LRO) finally convinced Katherine to give surfing a try, but once she did, she was hooked. After a few years of surfing a couple times a summer with LRO, Katherine decided to get her own prone surfboard to increase her skills, which is when she found Waves4All.

Katherine made steady progress surfing with Waves4All, going from surfing with 3–4 volunteers, to catching waves unassisted before Covid forced her to take over a year off.

Outside of surfing Katherine helped pioneer WCMX, being the first woman to compete in the sport, and also the first woman in the world to land a backflip on a wheelchair. She enjoys bringing other girls and women into the sport, which has grown to have a women’s division at almost every contest. Katherine is just coming off three straight podium finishes in WCMX, including 3rd in the first ever Adaptive Skateboarding division at the 2021 Dew Tour in Des Moines, Iowa.
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When she’s not at the skatepark or in the ocean, Katherine is a television writer and producer, who is always looking for ways to include action sports and challenged athletes in her next project.