Olympic skateboarding rules explained

For the first time in Olympic history, skateboarding will be a featured event. Here’s everything you need to know.

After becoming an essential part of street culture, skateboarding is set to make its Olympics debut at the 2021 Tokyo Games.

While there is no exact start date for the origins of skateboarding, the consensus is that the sport began in the 1940s on the west coast of the United States. Metal wheels were attached to a narrow-wooden board, thus beginning the start of something new.

By the 1950s, the original metal wheels were replaced by a clay-composite material. Known as a “Sidewalk Surfboard”, this new style became commercially available and began an upward trend in society.

A lot of the younger generation was all-in, and once again transformed skateboarding with the urethane wheel in the 1970s and continued to grow the sport in popularity and modernize it into how it is practiced today.

Skateboarding will feature exciting performances in its debut at the 2021 Olympics

The events will feature both men and women, while also including elements from street and park styles of skateboarding.

In the street competitions, contestants will take part in courses that mimic various elements from the “street” just as its name suggests. Among the course objects includes stairs, handrails, curbs, benches, walls and banks.

Meanwhile, the park contests will include a “hollowed-out, bowl-like course”, giving boarders the abilities to perform tricks in mid-air.

All Olympic courses will be designed from various world championship and qualifying event competitions. Each course is expected to be “considerably larger” than the typical competitive course, but it is still considered small enough for the contestants to perform at high levels during their performances.

The skateboarding Olympic competitions are set to begin on July 25 and conclude on Aug. 5.