X Games To Hold First Women’s Skateboard Vert Contest Since 2010

As X Games prepares to welcome spectators back to its summer event for the first time in three years, it is also building its most inclusive competition lineup to date.

For the first time since 2010, women’s skateboard vert will appear on the schedule. Additionally, X Games will hold a women’s skateboard best trick competition for the first time ever this summer.

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There are few vert competitions on the calendar these days and hardly any for women. In 2021, vert legend Tony Hawk set out to change that with the debut of his Vert Alert event, featuring a men’s and women’s final, a best trick event and a legends demo.

Now, this month’s Vert Alert will serve as an official X Games qualifier, with the men’s and women’s podium finishers clinching their spots in X Games California 2023 finals weekend July 21–23 in Ventura.

When X Games announced in May that Vert Alert was being folded into its qualifying events, it stood to reason that women’s skateboard vert would return to the competition schedule for the first time in 13 years.

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Both women’s finals will have the same prize purse as the men’s disciplines, which has been the case at X Games events since 2007.

Today’s announcement is not only a boon to female vert skaters, who will now be able to join their male counterparts in an X Games medal event, but to the discipline as a whole, which rose to mainstream prominence in the ’90s and early 2000s before being somewhat sidelined by the rise of park and street.

When X Games, announced in 2011 it would remove women’s skateboard vert from its program, it cited considerations such as a sport having a “solid year-round infrastructure, a growing participant base, an established annual competition schedule, rising youth talent pools, ample access to courses and low barriers of entry into the sport.”

More than a decade later, the discipline is healthier than ever for women and continues to grow. X Games’ new leadership, private equity firm MSP Sports Capital, which acquired a majority interest in X Games from ESPN Productions in October 2022, is steering the ship in a positive direction.

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The skill set for park and vert skateboarding is somewhat transferable, and even though vert didn’t join park and street on the Olympic program at the Tokyo Games, the infrastructure being built up around the world as a result of the Olympics to support female park skateboarders has also bolstered the athlete base for vert.

Many of the women who typically compete in park at X Games will take to the vert ramp. Those include Bryce Wettstein, Arisa Trew and Grace Marhoefer, who will attempt to qualify through Vert Alert, as well as Olympic medalist Sky Brown, who has also been invited to compete in the discipline.

The last time X Games held a women’s vert event, Brown was a toddler.

“I love skating everything—vert, bowls, street. I would be super down to [qualify for vert] at X Games,” Brown told me via Zoom. “It’s gonna be really cool; there a lot of great female vert skaters.”

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Brown, who is currently in Indonesia competing in a World Surf League qualifying event and hopes to represent Great Britain in both skateboarding and surfing at the upcoming Paris Olympics, is one of the world’s preeminent female park skateboarders—at just 14. She took bronze in the inaugural women’s skateboarding park final at the Tokyo Olympics.

Despite her young age, Brown doesn’t even represent the youngest generation of up-and-coming female skateboarders. In fact, since turning pro at age 10, she sees herself as an advocate for the sport and enjoys her role in inspiring and encouraging young girls to pick up a board.

She’ll be able to do that on the ground in Ventura next month at X Games Women’s Day on Saturday, June 21. The day will feature female athlete autograph signings, women-only learn to ride sessions, gift bags for the first 300 women entering the event and more.

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X Games is also partnering with Section Z to grow the sport of skateboarding among women by providing access and exposure for a diverse group of young female athletes. A group of 200 female high school students from the LA area will have a dedicated space to watch live competitions and interact with female athletes and executives.

“I’m so stoked about that,” Brown said about participating in Women’s Day events. “My dream since I was little was always to inspire, and that’s just amazing that we get to inspire these girls. Even though I’m not the littlest anymore, which is pretty crazy, these little girls are just going for it and it’s so cool to see.”

In addition to competing in women’s park and vert, Brown also hopes to get into the qualification for street best trick. “I’m a skateboarder; I’ll skate anything,” she said with a laugh. Close friend and multi-time X Games street medalist Rayssa Leal has been showing her the ropes on street features.

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Joining Leal in competing in women’s street best trick will be Olympic gold medalist Momiji Nishiya and Yumeka Oda.

For the first time since X Games Minneapolis in 2019, Brown and the rest of the athletes at X Games will have a live crowd cheering them on.

“At X Games, we just go hard, and we want to do our best tricks,” Brown said. “Having the crowd definitely gets me pumped up and fired up.”

Fans can find more information about X Games California 2023 as well as buy tickets at XGames.com.