At the Olympics, skateboarding has two main events: street and park. Each discipline will have 44 men and 44 women competing.
20 athletes will make it through based on their world rankings, the host nation France will get an automatic spot, and there will be four extra spots reserved for Universality Places to make sure there's a diverse representation.
Street Skateboarding Scoring
Street skateboarding involves skaters maneuvering through a course that mimics urban obstacles like stairs, rails, and ledges. Each skater gets to do two 45-second runs and has five tries to pull off their best tricks. Their performance is judged based on how hard the tricks are, how well they're executed, and the variety of tricks they perform.
In Paris 2024, they've switched up the scoring for skateboarding. Instead of the old 0-10 point system, now each trick or run is scored out of 100. The final score is based on the best run out of two and the best two tricks, adding up to a total score out of 300. Skaters can ask judges to ignore one trick attempt, giving it a score of zero, if they want another shot at it. In the event of a tie, the skater with the higher run score takes the lead, and if they're still tied, the skater with the higher-scoring trick wins.
Park Skateboarding Scoring
When you're park skateboarding, you'll be on a course that looks like a bowl with ramps and other cool stuff. The focus is on smooth lines and doing tricks while you're up in the air. In the initial rounds, each skater gets three 45-second turns, and the best one counts toward their score.
Just a heads up, in the finals, the top eight skaters do three more runs, and their final ranking is based on their highest-scoring single run. Each run gets judged on a scale from 0 to 100, taking into account things like height, difficulty, trick variety, and overall flow.
Five judges score each run, and they throw out the highest and lowest scores, then average the remaining three.
If there's a tie, the skater with the second-highest scoring run gets ranked higher.
So, whether you're into street or park, knowing the scoring can really amp up the excitement when you're watching.