Jamie Foy: the kid from Florida with the hot pink t-shirt who never stopped pushing

Vice dropped a new episode of Epicly Later'd this week, and the subject is none other than two times SOTY Jamie Foy. Filmmaker Patrick O'Dell takes him out on the water for some fishing to get him talking. It's a good watch.

But the real story is the one that brought Foy to Patrick O'Dell's attention in the first place.

Born on a board

Foy started skating at the age of one — he saw a skateboard, crawled onto it, and pushed himself off. By three, he could ollie. By seven, kickflips were dialed. Growing up in Deerfield Beach, Florida, he was deep in the contest circuit before most kids his age had figured out how to stand on a board. At four, he entered a local event and walked away with a year's supply of free pizza for being the youngest competitor of the day.

If you hadn't seen it already, here's a similar profile that Trasher did last year:

The overnight rise that wasn't

When Foy moved to Los Angeles in 2016, it looked like an overnight breakout — seven video parts in two years, a pro contract with Deathwish, an invitation to the Street League Tour. But that trajectory was built on years of Florida grind. His Welcome to Deathwish part, dropped in early 2017, included a frontside crooked grind down a 20-stair rail at El Toro — a spot notorious for its difficulty and length. First try. Thrasher gave him SOTY that same year. He was 21.

A different kind of obsession

What sets Foy apart isn't just the size of the rails he skates — it's the lengths he'll go to find them. He once spotted a down-straight-up rail in Essen, Germany, through a rollerblading account on Instagram, then booked a flight, rented a car, and drove there alone for three days just to find it. When he finally got on it, he called in the filmers for the New Balance Intervals video. The resulting backside 50-50 landed on the cover of Thrasher and became the defining trick of his second SOTY campaign.

That second title, in 2024, put him in extremely rare company. Only Tyshawn Jones, Chris Cole, and Danny Way had won SOTY twice before him. Not bad for a guy whose first brush with national attention was a slam on Rob Dyrdek's Ridiculousness at age 14, for which he earned $350.

Want to see more of some of Foy's most notorious spills? Watch his Battle Scars from The Berrics:

Still at it

Foy carried his 2024 momentum straight into 2025 with Aftermath, a video part that showcased his signature aggressive approach to rails and ledges, reinforcing his status as one of the most dominant street skaters in the world.

The Epicly Later'd episode is a nice moment of recognition — a chance to zoom out and appreciate the career.

But knowing Foy, he's already found the next rail.