Skateboarding Debuts At Tokyo Olympics Sunday 1:30AM CET

Like it or not, skateboarding has arrived at the Olympics. So, let’s delve into what its first instalment will bring this Sunday. Watching in Europe will require pulling an all-nighter as competition starts at 1:30AM CET with Men’s Street – the finals will take place right in time (5:30AM) to finish skateboarding’s debut event with breakfast.

There are 80 spots available in the 4 skateboarding events, Men’s street, Women’s street, Men’s park and Women’s park. Each event has 20 competitors,  3 have qualified from the World Championships, 16 from world rankings, and 1 from the host, Japan. The Ariake Urban Sports Park will host both disciplines.

Each National Olympic Committee (NOC), the governing body for each country’s Olympic goings-on, sent six men and six women skateboarders, with no more than three athletes per gender per event.

There will be 18 nations represented in park and 17 in street, with a total of 26 countries competing at the Games in skateboarding.

Street Schedule (times local to Japan)
Sunday- Men’s

Monday- Women’s

The schedules for Park follow a similar structure, however starts are due to be 9AM (2AM CET). Men’s Park is set for Wednesday, August 4 and the Women’s for Thursday, August 5. Check the full schedule here.

Street Competition Structure
The Street competition comprises three rounds: Qualifiers, Prelims/Semi-Finals, and Finals. In the qualifiers, skaters will compete in heats of up to 7 skaters, in a best of two 60 seconds runs contest format. The five judges will use a 0-100.00 points scale. The highest and lowest scores for each run or jam session are dropped, and the remaining three scores are averaged to two decimal places.

In the Prelims/Semi-Finals and Final rounds, the 20 skaters will compete in 4 heats of 5 skaters. The first eight skaters from the combined ranking of the heats will progress to the finals. In each round, the skaters will perform two 45 second runs and five individually scored tricks.

Both runs, and each of the five tricks, are judged by five judges who will use a 0-10.0 points scale. The highest and lowest judges’ scores for each run or trick are dropped, and the remaining three scores are averaged to give a score for each run and each trick (seven scores).

The best four scores from runs or tricks will be added to give the total score for the round.

Park Competition Structure
The Park competition consists of three rounds: Qualifiers, Prelims/Semi-Finals, and Finals. In the qualifiers, skaters will first compete in heats of up to 6 skaters. The first 20 skaters from the combined ranking of the heats will progress to the prelims.

In the prelims, the 20 skaters will compete in four heats of five skaters. The first eight skaters from the combined ranking of the heats will progress to the finals. In each round, the skaters will compete for the best of three or four runs ranging from 40 to 60 seconds depending skate-park size or layout.

Who’s Competing?

Watch the action live on or catch up in the daytime via terrestrial local TV/ networks or the Olympic YouTube channel.

And yes… the official NBC Olympic commentator is none other than Tony Hawk!