Olympic Skateboarding skateparks – Street vs Park disciplines

You may be watching the skateboarding in the Olympics and be wondering what is the difference between ‘Street’ and ‘Park’ disciplines. We’re going to try and answer that question for you.

Skateboarding ‘Street’

Whilst this event is called Street, the event doesn’t really take place in the street. Instead a ‘Street’ style skatepark is designed and built for the event. I guess this is because it would be quite impractical to take the skaters out to real street spots to run the contest.

The design of the skatepark includes street furniture like:

• Stair sets
• Handrails
• Flat banks
• Ledges/hubbas
• Driveways

Another way of describing this style of park, is a Plaza, because it replicates street furniture found in town centre plazas which skaters found were great for hitting up.

The typical street park style does typically include more traditionally ‘park’ style quarter-pipes (or transitions) at each end of the skatepark to make turning around easier.

Skateboarding ‘Park’

The park style skatepark design is a typically of a bowl type design. The bowl is a design style that evolved out of the skating of swimming pools in the 1970s.

The walls in back yard pools are typically difficult to skate, being very  steep, and often without straight sections. There often wasn’t a flat bottom. The bowl-type design evolved to be more uniform, using:

• walls with longer radiuses (not so steep), and
• more defined straight walls combined with corner wall sections, and
• flat sections on the floor of the bowl

all of which gives the rider more time to set up, react, and make it easier to skate than traditional pools.

‘Hips’ have also been added to add interesting features to the design. Hips are reflex angles (usually greater than 270 degrees) in the design which you can transfer from and do tricks out of.

Special metal coping is now used at the top edges of bowls to make grind tricks easier and requires less maintenance.

The design of the ‘Park’ style skateparks often have a nod to the street style, with a ledge or flat bank incorporated in the bowl orientated design.

In summary

Flat surfaces and obstacles are more typically deployed in Street style parks, versus curved (or transition/quarter-pipes) in Park style skateparks.

See more about about the design of the Olympics skateparks.