How is Olympic Park Skateboarding Scored?

With the Men's and Women's Skateboard Park beginning tomorrow, August 6th, many folks are starting to ask, "How does it all work?" And we're here to simplify it as best as possible. 

What's the Format for Olympic Park Skateboarding?

Both the Men's and Women's contests starts with 22 skaters and each have two rounds—prelims and finals—and every run is scored on a scale. In this case, the scale is measured from 0-100 and is based on each skater's overall run. 

As far as Olympic Park Skateboarding scoring is concerned, difficulty of tricks, style, flow, use of terrain and a handful of other factors come into play here. But again—really nothing new, right?

Each skater gets a 45-second run to get rad, and each lap is scored by a panel of five judges stemming from different backgrounds in the skateboarding world. This leaves room for some diversity and perhaps a little risk...depending on how the skater is feeling that day. During the prelims, the highest score of their three runs becomes the final. The top eight advance.

When the dust settles, the top eight skaters with the best scores will find themselves in the finals, where the process basically repeats itself until we see those smiling faces on the podium. But keep in mind, scores from the prelims don't carry over to the finals. They're basically starting from scratch. 

At this point, the highest and lowest scores are then dropped, meaning the three remaining will be averaged together, and boom—we get the final score.

Hey, like I said, this is a big responsibility and is certainly not an easy task by any means. Skateboarding is full of opinions and spontaneity—despite how structured the Olympics are—making it super hard to separate what you find rad with what's officially being scored.  

What can ya do?

At any rate, catch all the action tomorrow, August 6th and Wednesday, August 7th. Both the Men's and Women's finals should be starting around 8:30am PST. So, depending on where you are in the country...just add (or subtract—Hawaii) a few hours. Tomorrow is the big day! Who else is fired up?

Thumbnail Photos: World Skate / Atiba Jefferson & Bryce Kanights