Skateboarding's Olympic Debut: A Comparative Analysis Describing the Men's and Women's Street Competition

Abstract

<jats:p>The aim of this study was to describe aspects of performance in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic street skateboarding competition and compare the men's (M) and women's (W) divisions. Trick attempts (TA = 1118) were extracted from broadcast footage of the semi-finals and finals using notational analysis. Descriptive analyses were adopted to characterise performance, with robust linear mixed-effects models comparing attempt scores (run [RUN] and best-trick [BT]) between divisions. Men's RUN (β = 1.71 [1.43, 1.99]) and BT (β = 1.85 [1.55, 2.15]) scores were higher and more variable than the women. Overall, there was more trick variety during BTs, but less obstacle variability compared to RUNs. Skaters bailed a greater proportion of BT TAs (54.6%) than RUN TAs (14.3%). Men demonstrated greater variety than women by diversifying take-off (M = 28.2% vs. W = 3.3% non-regular) and landing (M = 25.7% vs. W = 6.2% non-regular) stances, attempting more unique tricks (M = 122 vs. W = 74), and using larger feature obstacles (M = 40.7% vs. W = 33.9% of TAs). Alternatively, women demonstrated wider course use during BTs (M = 15% vs. W = 32.1% of all obstacles), corresponding to less feature obstacle use; perhaps indicating a barrier to engagement due to developing physical qualities. Future research should explore men's and women's divisions respectively to understand key factors for success.</jats:p>