Overview

Across the Park and Street competitions, the Australian team featuring some of the world’s top ranked skaters, including a World Champion and one of the youngest members of the Australian Olympic Team.

Newcastle’s Poppy Starr Olsen, 21, enters the Tokyo Games ranked fourth in the world in the women’s Park format, while in the men’s event, the Gold Coast’s Keegan Palmer, 18, is currently ranked seventh and Minnamurra’s Kieran Woolley, 17, is ranked 24th.

In the women’s Street discipline, Hayley Wilson, 19, from Mansfield in Victoria, is a five-time national champion currently ranked ninth in the world while, in the men’s event, Melbourne’s world No.15 Shane O’Neill, 31, is the 2016 World Champion and 2020 Oceania Continental Champion.

The Format

The skateboarding competition is made up of two disciplines – Street and Park – with 20 competitors featuring in each of the men’s and women’s competitions. Each discipline features four heats of five competitors, with the top eight from the heats progressing to the Finals.

STREET: Skaters complete two 45-second runs where they perform a sequence of tricks across replicas of real-life urban terrain, such as stairs rails and ledges. They then perform a “best trick” section consisting of five separate attempts to perform tricks of their choosing. 

PARK: Skaters perform three 45-second timed ‘runs’ where they execute their best sequence of tricks on a course consisting of traditional concrete bowls and quarter pipes containing a range of features known as spines, gaps, extensions, hips, banks and variable grinding surfaces. In the Final competitors have four 45-second runs.

One Minute, One Sport | Skateboarding

Video courtesy of tokyo2020.org / olympicchannel.com 

The Scoring 

Judges use specific criteria to formulate their scores, based on difficulty, execution, use of course, flow and consistency.

STREET: Both of the runs and each of the five tricks are scored out of 10 by five judges. The highest and lowest judges’ scores for each run or trick are dropped and the remaining scores are averaged to give a final score for each run and trick. The best four scores from the runs and tricks are then added to give the total score.

PARK: Five judges score competitors from 0-100. The highest and lowest scores for each run are dropped and the remaining three scores are averaged to two decimal points to give a score for the run. The skater’s best 45-second run counts as their final score. 

Eyes on the Competition?

PARK: The women’s event will be one of the most anticipated competitions at the Tokyo Games. World No.4 Olsen will go head-to-head with two of Japan’s most heralded stars, 15-year-old world No.1 Misugu Okamoto and 19-year-old world No.2 Sakura Yosozumi, as well as world No.3, 13-year-old British sensation Sky Brown. Top-ranked American duo Heimana Reynolds and Cory Juneau headline a world class field in the men’s event.

STREET: American Nyjah Huston and Japanese pair Yuto Horigome and Sora Shirai top the men’s world rankings, while Brazilian duo Pamela Rosa, 21, and 13-year-old Rayssa Leal are the top ranked competitors in the women’s event.

The Lingo

Skateboarding has its own language when it comes to tricks, so get set to learn all about kickflips, frontside 180s, backside bluntsides and nollieflip noseslides, to name a few. The foundation of modern Street skateboarding is the Ollie, which sees skaters lift their boards off the ground using only their feet and opens up a myriad of opportunities for different tricks. In Park, tricks consist primarily of airs, lip tricks and inverts.

Such is the creativity, competitiveness and courage of the world’s best skaters, expect to see some never-before seen tricks in Tokyo.

Did You Know

Not only is Poppy Starr Olsen Australia’s top-ranked Park skater, she is also a movie star! Tall Poppy: A Skater’s Story is a documentary that chronicles Olsen’s journey from an eight-year-old starting out at the skate park at Bondi, in Sydney, to becoming an Olympian and one of the biggest stars on the world skateboarding tour.

Keegan Palmer, our top-ranked male skater, is the youngest ever male medallist at the Park World Championships, winning bronze in 2018.

Kieran Woolley, 17, is the third youngest member of the Australian Olympic Team. He sealed his qualification for the Games while competing in wrist braces as he recovered from two broken wrists.

The Facts

The skateboarding events are being held at the Ariake Urban Sports Park.

The men’s Street heats, featuring Shane O’Neill, start at 9am local time on Sunday (10am AEST), July 25 (Day 2) with the Final starting at 12.25pm (1:25pm AEST), while the women’s Street heats, featuring Hayley Wilson, start at 9am (10am AEST) local time on Monday, July 26 (Day 3) with the Final starting at 12.25pm (1:25pm AEST).

The women’s Park heats, featuring Poppy Starr Olsen, start at 9am (10am AEST) local time on Wednesday, August 4 (Day 12) with the Final starting at 12.30pm (1:30pm AEST), while the men’s Park heats, featuring Keegan Palmer and Kieran Woolley, start at 9am (10am AEST) local time on Thursday, August 5 (Day 13) with the Final starting at 12.30pm (1:30pm AEST).

The Medal ceremonies will immediately follow the Finals.

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