Arto Saari (born November 9, 1981) is a Finnish professional skateboarder and photographer. Early life Saari was born in Seinäjoki, Finland. His mother was supportive of his skateboarding and his first skateboard was a Vision Gator model. Skateboarding Saari first attracted attention from the global skateboarding community when he competed at the world championship event in Munster, Germany in 1998 at the age of 16 years. Following the event, Saari was invited by professional skateboarder Danny Way to tour Canada with Plan B, Platinum, and the Red Dragons teams, and received a mailed airline ticket at his family home. However, Saari's professional skateboarding career commenced following his decision to relocate to the United States with Flip and he has rode for the company for most of his professional career. Saari was selected as the "2001 Skater of the Year" by Thrasher. After receiving the award, Saari stated, "I never thought it would actually like ... whatever, happen to me, or what not. Like, it's just one of those things that's just come out of the blue, you know?" In what was perceived as a shocking decision by the global skateboard community, Saari announced his decision to leave Flip in 2008 due to the distress that was caused by the death of Flip rider Shane Cross. In an interview with skateboard journalist, Chris Nieratko, following his decision (Saari later contacted Nieratko to prevent the interview from being published and the journalist published it on his personal website instead), Saari explained the process of leaving Flip: It was really heavy but they [Flip] took it pretty good. I thought they were going to come and chop my legs off but they were very reasonable about it but it’s been a heavy process. It’s been on good terms. I just felt like I had to move on. I changed all my other sponsors, I might as well. Why stop now? New knee, new liver, new shoe company, new board sponsor ... Yeah, I did shed a few tears. It’s like getting a divorce; even though I’ve never been married other than Flip. I can imagine it’s something like that. There’s parts that you like but there’s parts that you just want to move on past. It’s really hard to deal with. You wonder, ‘Are you going to lose friends? Are you going to lose business?’ It was a tough decision to make and