Tony Hawk competes in the best trick event in his inaugural Tony Hawk's Vert Alert competition in ... More 2021 in Salt Lake City Lucas Bruton On Wednesday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced the event program and athlete quotas for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. While many new disciplines will enjoy their Olympic debut, vert skateboarding will not be among them. LA28 will have 351 medal events, 22 more than Paris 2024 did. The LA28 program maintains the core athlete quota of 10,500, with an extra 698 quota places allocated for the five sports proposed by the LA28 organizing committee: baseball/softball, cricket, flag football, lacrosse and squash. With the inclusion of boxing, approved by the IOC Session in March 2025, the LA28 sports program is composed of 31 sports in all, six of them new or returning. Many existing Olympic sports added medal events. Swimming will now include 50m backstroke, butterfly and breaststroke events for both men and women. In rowing, women’s solo (CW1x), men’s solo (CM1x) and mixed double sculls (CX2x) will make their debut. Sport climbing’s boulder and lead events will now be contested as separate medal events. And after debuting at Paris 2024, 3x3 basketball will now include 12 teams per gender, up from eight in Paris. MORE FOR YOU Huge Changes To Student Loan Repayment Plans Are Coming, And Borrowers Could Pay A Steep Price Trump Approval Rating Tracker: Two Post-Tariff Surveys Show Decline Will Trump Negotiate Tariffs? 90-Day Pause Issued As These Countries Ask To Bargain Of the 31 Olympic International Federations, 24 had requested a change to their event program from the Paris 2024 Games. Among them was World Skate, which hoped to add a vert skateboarding medal event to LA28, in addition to the street and park events that debuted at Tokyo 2020 and returned for Paris 2024. Vert skateboarding—the style that sees skaters perform tricks on a near-vertical ramp—was once synonymous with the sport. From pop culture to video games to magazine covers, vert was everywhere in the ’90s and early aughts, helped in large part by Hawk’s groundbreaking 900, which he became the first to land at X Games 5 in 1999. However, vert’s shine began to fade as disciplines like park and street rose to prominence. Today, street skateboarding is by far the sport’s most popular discipline, exemplified by Nyjah Huston, one of the highest-paid skateboarders in the world. But of the skateboarding disciplines, vert is arguably the most well-suited to being an Olympic event. The entire story of a run is contained on a single ramp. Even if they can’t count rotations quickly enough to know if a skater has done a 720 or 1080, viewers intrinsically understand that when skaters soar high over the lip of the ramp, complete kickflips and grabs cleanly and don’t bobble their landings that they had a good run. Park and street skateboarding, in contrast, are more technical and less obvious to a general viewer. In street in particular, a best trick portion that counts a skater’s two best tricks in five total attempts means that athletes are frequently trying to land their two most difficult tricks, knowing they only need to land two. To an average viewer, it—erroneously, but nevertheless—looks like the best skaters in the world can’t land tricks. Hawk has made this same argument over the years in regard to vert’s potential inclusion in the Olympics. “There is this element of vert that continues to evolve, continues to push limits, there are new tricks happening on vert all the time you will never see in park terrain or in the Olympics," Hawk told me in 2020. In 2022, Hawk said, “Vert skating is an underappreciated discipline in skateboarding and absolutely one of the most exciting for spectators.” Vert’s decline was undoubtedly associated with lack of access to halfpipes, which, through lack of funding, began to disappear from municipal and other public-access parks. As Hawk points out, vert ramps are made of wood, and they don’t do well outdoors. His Skatepark Project, which has funded 661 skatepark projects in all 50 states, has helped concrete parks flourish, but he also wants to build more public vert ramps. To skate vert, one often has to know someone with access to a vert ramp. Street skaters, meanwhile, can skate any urban feature that catches their eye. In 2016, when the IOC approved skateboarding as a new sport for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, park and street were the only disciplines included. It was the same at the Paris 2024 Games. Part of the reason vert was not approved as a discipline is that, at the time, there wasn’t enough participation worldwide, especially on the women’s side. If anyone could change that, it was Hawk. In 2021, he launched his Vert Alert competition. A “legends demo” allowed fans to see some of the all-time greats drop in once more: Hawk, Andy Macdonald, Christian Hosoi, Steve Caballero, Kevin Staab, Mike Frazier, Bob Burnquist, Sandro Dias and Lincoln Ueda. ForbesTony Hawk Proves Vert Skateboarding Isn’t Dead With Inaugural Vert Alert Event In Salt Lake CityBy Michelle Bruton But Hawk was truly focused on showcasing the discipline’s current talent base; skaters like Jimmy Wilkins, Jordyn Barratt, Sky Brown, Edouard Damestoy, Rony Gomes, Paul-Luc Ronchetti, Bryce Wettstein, Gui Khury, Moto Shibata, Tom Schaar, Mitchie Brusco, Lilly Stoephasius, Arisa Trew, Reese Nelson and many more—all of them skilled enough to make their respective nations’ Olympic teams were vert to be added to the Olympics. “I’m just trying to get a series off the ground and have an appreciation for it so the pros who dedicate their lives to it can finally get some financial gain,” Hawk told me at that first Vert Alert. The discipline has been on the rise once more, thanks in large part to Hawk’s efforts but also, in the U.S., the nonprofit Exposure Skate, which develops young female skaters in all disciplines. Around the world, nations have funneled resources into women’s skateboarding. In 2022, World Skate organized the first Vert skateboarding world championship. Vert has remained a staple discipline at X Games for men’s skateboarding, but in 2023, undoubtedly in part due to the momentum generated by Vert Alert, X Games held its first women’s vert competition since 2010. ForbesX Games To Hold First Women’s Skateboard Vert Contest Since 2010, Add Street Best Trick EventBy Michelle Bruton In 2024, Vert Alert became an official qualifying event for X Games. And it was there it became clear that there’s a legitimate youth movement in the discipline. Aussie skateboarder Arisa Trew, who would go on to take gold in women’s park at the Paris 2024 Olympics, won the women’s vert competition at Vert Alert 2024 at the age of 14. Meanwhile, nine-year-old Ewa Kawakami of Japan stunned the world when he landed three consecutive 900s at that same Vert Alert. Though Hawk is not on the official committee working with the IOC to determine which skateboarding disciplines should be added to the Olympics, he has made his willingness to help organize a vert competition at LA28 known. Hawk’s personal ramp is the best in the world and completely portable. (It travels to Salt Lake City each year for Vert Alert.) Find somewhere to put it, he told Olympic organizers, and it’s yours to use for the Games. (Park and street skating at LA28 will be held at the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area, the second largest urban park in Los Angeles. Surely Hawk’s ramp could have found a temporary home there.) But with the 698 additional quota places allocated for the five new or returning sports proposed by the LA28 organizing committee, it seems adding 44 additional quotas for vert (22 men and 22 women, as park and street are structured as well) weren’t tenable. This isn’t the end for vert’s chances of becoming an Olympic discipline. As of LA28, skateboarding will be a permanent sport on the Olympic program, and skateboarding is a major sport in Australia, which will be hosting the 2032 Summer Games in Brisbane. Still, there’s no question the IOC has missed a golden opportunity to host vert skateboarding in its birthplace of Southern California, on Tony Hawk’s ramp, and add another chapter to a storied discipline that has had its ups and downs, but is undoubtedly here to stay. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Editorial StandardsForbes Accolades