How to watch park skateboarding at Tokyo Olympics: Schedule, channels and more

The last chances to watch skateboarding at the Tokyo Olympics are coming up, and Team USA is hoping to add to its sole bronze medal with some golds. Yes, after Jagger Eaton medaled in the street competition this past Sunday, teammate Heimana Reynolds from Hawaii looks to take gold in the park event

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CLICK HERE TO WATCH FREE

Yes, the final events of the men’s and women’s skateboarding Olympic competition are “park” format, taking the style of skateboarding born out of Venice Beach, CA to the big games. This format, with its steeper edges of bowls and ramps, enables higher velocity gains in shorter times, which could make for more awesome moves.

Reynolds is likely wondering how Japan’s Hirano Ayumu, a two-time Winter Olympic medalist, will compete. Japan’s already taken two golds After including one from Horigome Yuto in the street event on July 25.

The women’s side of the Olympic skateboarding events features tons of prodigious talent, with Japan’s Hiraki Kokona looking to show the world what a 12-year-old an do. Team GB’s fielding its own super-young talent, the 13-year-old Sky Brown.

Also keep your eyes out for Finland’s Lizzie Armanto, the only female skater to complete Tony Hawk’s 360 loop.

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Of the services you will want for these games, Peacock will help you see highlights at night, while Sling TV and Fubo TV can help you catch games on tape-delay.

How to watch skateboarding at the Tokyo Olympics from anywhere in the world
The Olympics is a global event and can be viewed in almost every country on Earth. However, if you’re not in your home country and can’t watch the Tokyo Olympics’ skateboarding events with your usual services — or you want to watch in your native language — you’re not out of luck.

With a virtual private network, or VPN, you can appear to be surfing the web from your home town (or somewhere that blackouts won’t hit), and access the same streaming services you already paid for. They’re totally legal, inexpensive and easy to use.

Not sure which VPN is right for you? We’ve tested many different services and our pick for the best VPN overall is ExpressVPN. It offers superb speeds and excellent customer service. But you’ve got other VPN options as well.

Sunday started with the first gold medal for the United States, won by Chase Kalisz in the men’s 400-meter individual medley. Ahmed Hafnaoui, 18, of Tunisia was the surprise winner of the men’s 400 free. Australia swam away with the women’s 4×100 relay, and the United States, with Simone Manuel swimming the anchor leg, won the bronze medal.

Simone Biles made her debut, but the American women’s gymnastics team was overshadowed by Russia. Biles even made some errors, flying out of bounds in the floor exercise and stumbling on her beam dismount.

After a shaky exhibition campaign that included two losses, the American men’s basketball team faltered again in its Olympic opener against France, 83-76.

After lighting the cauldron at the opening ceremony, Naomi Osaka dispatched Zheng Saisai in her first tennis match, 6-1, 6-4.

For the first time ever, there was skateboarding at the Olympics, with the men’s street competition, and the gold medal went to Yuto Horigome of Japan.

The United States won just its third gold medal in women’s fencing as Lee Kiefer won the foil event with a 15-13 victory over top-ranked Inna Deriglazova of Russia. The two previous golds were both in saber by Mariel Zagunis in 2004 and 2008.

Anastasija Zolotic won the first women’s taekwondo gold medal ever for the United States.
Skateboarding is ready for its time to shine at the Tokyo Olympics. Competitors will show off the skills they developed in the streets and skateparks around the world, and the hope is that they attract younger fans to watch the Games.

It’s been an interesting ride for the sport that has rebel roots in southern California.

The skatepark on the beach in Venice, Calif., is a mecca for the sport. For decades, the area was known as “Dogtown,” with skateboarders coming there to show off their skills, doing acrobatic flips and tricks.

“They would build homemade ramps and just do sort of like hard-core shredding, and it was just their getaway,” says Ruby Molina, whose family owns a nearby skate shop. “And all the kids would just come, and like it was their getaway.”

Back in the day, skateboarding was an offshoot of surfing, another sport making its Olympic debut. In fact, it was first known as “sidewalk surfing” — with kids on long wooden boards with metal wheels, riding on cement as though they were riding waves.

The pioneering 1970s skateboard crew Zephyr, known as the “Z Boys” from Dogtown, boasted of sneaking into and draining backyard swimming pools to skate inside them. Skateboarders looking for off-limits locations would get stopped by police. Sometimes they still do.

Legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk told NPR in 2006 that skateboarding always had a bit of an outlaw street culture with a bad reputation. And it received a lot of negative labels: “It was a kid’s fad, a waste of time, a dangerous pursuit, a crime,” he recalled.

Skateboarding became popular around the world and Hawk turned his childhood hobby into a career. He’s always talked about how the Olympics need skateboarding to attract young fans. Now that day is here, and Hawk, now 53, is in Tokyo as an official Olympics commentator.

“We used to see ourselves as a family of misfits,” Hawk said in a promotional video. “But now the world will call us Olympians.”

At the Games, street skaters will compete on a course that includes stairs, handrails, curbs, ledges, and benches. Park skaters will try to outdo each other’s mid-air tricks on a course with steep slopes and deep valleys.

Before coming to Tokyo, Team USA skateboarders rode in formation past American flags in downtown Los Angeles. Among them was street skater Nyjah Huston. The tattooed 26-year-old from Laguna Beach, California is already the top-ranked, highest-paid skateboarder in the world. He’s been a pro since he was 10.

“I love skateboarding because it’s the funnest thing on Earth,” he told friends and fans at the L.A. event introducing the team. “That goes for not only if you’re one of us, about to skate the Olympics, or just a kid out there skating in a skate park, just having fun. It’s the freedom, the love it brings us all together and the non-stop challenge and the progression.”