Skateboarding is an action sport that involves riding and performing tricks using a skateboard, as well as a recreational activity, an art form, an entertainment industry job, and a method of transportation. Originating in the United States, skateboarding has been shaped and influenced by many skateboarders throughout the years. A 2009 report found that the skateboarding market is worth an estimated $4.8 billion in annual revenue, with 11.08 million active skateboarders in the world. In 2016, it was announced that skateboarding would be represented at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, for both male and female teams.
Boardsports are active outdoor sports that are played with some sort of board as the primary equipment. These sports take place on a variety of terrains, from paved flat-ground and snow-covered hills to water and air. Most boardsports are considered action sports or extreme sports, and thus often appeal to youth. Some board sports were marginalized in the past. However, many board sports are gaining mainstream recognition, and with this recognition, they have enjoyed wider broadcast, sponsorship and inclusion in institutional sporting events, including the Olympic Games.
John Rodney Mullen is an American professional skateboarder who practices freestyle skateboarding and street skateboarding. He is considered the third most influential skater in the history of the sport, just behind Tony Hawk and Mark Gonzales. Mullen is credited for inventing numerous tricks, including the flatground ollie, kickflip, heelflip, impossible, and 360-flip. As a result, he has been called the "Godfather of modern freestyle skating."
720° is a skateboarding video game released in arcades by Atari Games in 1986. The player controls a skateboarder skating around a middle-class neighborhood. By doing jumps and tricks, the player can eventually acquire enough points to compete at a skate park. The game's name comes from the "ultimate" trick, turning a full 720° in the air after jumping off a ramp.
A skatepark, or skate park, is a purpose-built recreational environment made for skateboarding, BMX, scootering, wheelchairs, and aggressive inline skating. A skatepark may contain half-pipes, handrails, funboxes, vert ramps, stairsets, quarter pipes, ledges, spine transfers, pyramids, banked ramps, full pipes, pools, bowls, snake runs, and any number of other objects.
Skimboarding or skimming is a boardsport in which a skimboard is used to glide across the water's surface to meet an incoming breaking wave, and ride it back to shore. There are currently 3 U.S. based competitive organizations including Premier Skim, Skim USA, and the United Skim Tour. Wave-riding skimboarders perform a variety of surface and air maneuvers, at various stages of their ride, out to, and back with, the wave. Some of these are known as "wraps", "big spins", "360 shove-its" and "180s". Unlike surfing, skimboarding begins on the beach by dropping the board onto the thin wash of previous waves. Skimboarders use their momentum to skim out to breaking waves, which they then catch back into shore in a manner similar to surfing.
A longboard is a type of skateboard typified by longer decks and wheelbases, larger-diameter and softer (lower-durometer) wheels, and often lower riding height compared to street skateboards, though there is wide variation in the geometry and construction of longboards. Among the earliest types of skateboards, longboards were inspired by surfing, with early longboards drawing from the design of surfboards, resembling and mimicking the motion of riding a surfboard, but adapted to riding on streets in a practice known as sidewalk surfing.
Natas Kaupas is an American former professional skateboarder. He grew up in South Santa Monica, California, in the area known as Dogtown, and is of Lithuanian descent. He is often referred to as one of the first true professional street skateboarders.
Greendog: The Beached Surfer Dude! is a platform game developed by Interactive Designs for the Sega Genesis console, and was published by Sega in September 1992. A port to the handheld Game Gear was released a year later.
Flatland skimboarding is a form of skimboarding practiced on non-coastal waters, such as a river, lake, stream or puddle. It uses a wooden board about three times as wide as a skateboard and one and a half times as long. The board is thrown across a thin film of water. While the board is still moving the rider jumps on and skims across the water to perform tricks.
T&C Surf Designs II: Thrilla's Surfari is a sequel to Town & Country Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) video game system.
Street skateboarding is a skateboarding discipline which focuses on flat-ground tricks, grinds, slides and aerials within urban environments, and public spaces. Street skateboarders meet, skate, and hang out in and around urban areas referred to as "spots," which are commonly streets, plazas or industrial areas. To add variety and complexity to street skateboarding, obstacles such as handrails, stairs, walls, flower beds, bins, park benches, picnic tables, and other street furniture may be traversed as single tricks or as part of a series of consecutive tricks called a "line."
Xtreme Sports is a sports video game developed by WayForward Technologies for the Game Boy Color. It was initially published by Infogrames and first released in North America on June 28, 2000. The game is similar to one of WayForward's PC games, Xtreme Sports Arcade: Summer Edition (1999). The artist of Xtreme Sports would later go on to continue work with the Shantae series. A port for Nintendo Switch was released on August 15, 2023.
Skateboarding made its debut appearance at the 2020 Summer Olympics in 2021 in Tokyo, Japan. It has also been provisionally approved by the IOC for inclusion at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
Touchgrind is a series of skateboarding simulation games developed and published by Swedish studio Illusion Labs. The first game released for iOS on October 15, 2008, with a version for iPad released not long after the product's launch on March 31, 2010.
Surfskating, or surf skateboarding, is a form of skateboarding that replicates the experience of surfing on dry land. A surfskate system is distinguished from a traditional skateboard system by the utilization of two different trucks, front and back, with specific functions and geometries that, together, yield thrust, just like a surfboard.
Town & Country Surf Designs may refer to:
