If there is one thing Graham Buksa wants people to know about the experience of wiping out going 110 km/h on a longboard down a mountainous road in Brazil, it is this: it wasn’t his fault. “There is a guy that wiped out into me.” Buksa, founder of Rayne longboards received an alumni Horiozon award from the University of Alberta Thursday for building his company. It began as an idea, grew with help of the university, and now sells tens of thousands of boards a year, while employing 35 people in Vancouver full time.Along with being a designer of the company’s top of the line skateboards, Buksa races them himself. He graduated with an engineering degree in 2004 and started the company right away.In what began as a business out of university machine shops, Rayne now builds board for the competitive long boarding circuit.

“Our goal is to make a board for the best without any compromises.”

Buksa said his university professors were there to help and suggest, and there was a lot of activities and groups that helped him obtain the skills he needed.

“There was just so much opportunity and it was easy to walk through it,” he said. “If you want to step through that doorway there is no one saying no.” By Ryan Tumilty