Stay on Board navigates the story of a trans athlete with empathy and respect

The best part about nonfiction storytelling is that stories aren’t told; they emerge. Living is the only script, and nobody – not even the documentary makers – know what lies ahead. Once you commit to following someone, you commit to the unpredictability of life. For instance, Stay on Board was pitched to Netflix as the journey of a trans, non-binary athlete going to Tokyo 2020 to compete in a sport that’s making its Olympic debut. The subject: American pro skateboarder Leo Baker. Arguably the best in the world. The camera would follow him through 2019, through the trials, and presumably through to his eventual glory as one of the first ever gold medal winners in Olympic skateboarding.

But the documentary that emerged instead might go down as one of the most path-breaking LGBTQ stories captured on camera. The skateboarding is almost incidental to the journey: Leo Baker, formerly Lacey Baker, slowly gets disillusioned with the gendered restrictions of his sport, quits the “Women’s” Olympic team, officially comes out as a trans-masculine athlete (something he had done in his private life long ago), finally signs up for surgery during a global pandemic, transitions successfully, owns the he/him pronoun, and quits the sport altogether. Oh, and Nike snaps him up, only a few years after his ‘dyke-like’ image turned away sponsors and sent him into deep depression. Nobody can write this story. Skateboarding, who?

Stay on Board does a fine job of exposing the uninitiated viewer to the toxic relationship between high-level sports and gender/sexual identity. The inclusion of his queer friends, colleagues, his single mother and especially his partner Mel provides a fascinating peek into a life that’s aching to find release. Leo Baker was a prodigy, but when he was afraid that the sport would reject him if he told his truth. So he continued to compete in women’s competitions, winning it all, becoming an icon, but withering away inside every time an announcer – or, in one great moment, a former high-school coach – referred to him as “female skateboarder” Lacey Baker. His love for the sport that rescued him from a dysfunctional and tough childhood is challenged when the sport refuses to recognize who he really is. The pressure of being famous within the community eats away at him, because in his head, Baker suspects that he’s letting down the thousands of queer American kids and social outcasts who’ve let skateboarding become their pride and identity. It’s a layered story, and one that’s all the better for the empathy and curiosity that the makers treat Leo Baker with. You can sense that the camera, too, is willing to learn – from his intimacy with his partner, from the tears and anxiety of gender dysmorphia, from his inner turmoil, and even from his courage to sacrifice ambition at the altar of authenticity. It’s one of the rare documentaries where – by chance or by pattern – we see the most definitive phase of a person’s life. The film’s willingness to follow Baker through the un-cinematic period of uncertainty, to wherever he eventually takes it, is exemplary. Most documentaries might have let go during the lockdowns, with no end or resolution in sight, with the Olympics and the drama gone. But Stay on Board stays the course and earns closure for its person – with the sort of brave fly-on-wall dignity we don’t usually associate with films that don’t go according to ‘plan’.

At one point, we even see the precise moment Leo Baker decides to come out in public, in a comment on a social media platform, followed by the immediate backlash. This is by far the most private moment in a trans person’s life. But the inherent trust between maker and Baker ensures that we watch him without intruding on him. It’s a fine balance, one that offers answers to all the unsaid questions that he – and we – struggled to ask. The resulting documentary reveals a trans, non-binary former athlete going to embrace an existence that’s making its cultural debut. By the end, the viewer feels just as grateful as the person on screen. Seeing Leo Baker as nobody but “Lee” – as he likes to be called by his near and dear ones – is the coolest cut of them all.

Rahul Desai is a film critic and programmer, who spends his spare time travelling to all the places from the movies he writes about.

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