Lee Ralph

Lee Ralph is an artist and former New Zealand professional skateboarder from Auckland, active from the late 1970s and through the 1980s, whose sudden disappearance from the skateboarding scene in the early 1990s prompted several investigations and articles and, in 2024, made him the subject of an upcoming television series called Sk8 or Die. He is Maori and affiliated with the iwi Te Rarawa. He began skateboarding around the age of seven in the late 1970s in Auckland before moving to Lower Hutt, where he met Gregor Rankine, a skateboarder who mentored him. He travelled to Australia in 1986, won competitions and established a profile that included an appearance on a 60 Minutes special on skateboarding, and later that year he went to the United States to compete.