For the second time, action sports will have a major presence at a Summer Olympics with skateboard park, skateboard street and BMX freestyle events being held at the Paris 2024 Games.
Given these sports’ successful debut in the Tokyo Olympics, organizers have allotted more quota spots to them this cycle. In Paris, 88 total skateboarders (44 men and 44 women) will compete, up from 80 at the Tokyo Olympics. The field for BMX freestyle has grown to 24 total (12 men and 12 women), up from 18 in Tokyo.
Of those 112 action sports athletes, 36 have ties to Woodward, the U.S.-based experiential action sports company. Founded as a gymnastics camp in 1970, Woodward now specializes in action sports experiences across its properties including skateboarding, BMX, scooter, parkour and freestyle snowboarding and skiing.
Among those 36 athletes, 23 have trained at Woodward facilities in the past year, underscoring the brand’s importance not only in supporting current pros in their Olympic bids but in developing the next generation of action sports athletes.
“Woodward has always been at the forefront of progression in action sports,” said Woodward president Chris “Gunny” Gunnarson. “We are thrilled to see so many of the athletes who have trained at Woodward qualifying for the Paris Olympics. It’s a testament to their hard work and dedication, as well as the world-class training facilities and support provided by Woodward.”
Woodward, which is owned by POWDR, now operates eight facilities in the U.S.: Woodward Mt. Bachelor, Woodward Tahoe, Woodward West, Woodward Park City, Woodward Copper, Woodward Eldora, Woodward Pennsylvania and Woodward Killington.
For American athletes, Woodward facilities are akin to a national training ground—and, indeed, Woodward Copper and Woodward Park City entered into an agreement with U.S. Ski & Snowboard in 2022 to serve as official Olympic training centers ahead of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games.
But Woodward’s facilities are also highly sought after by athletes and national teams from all over the world. In the lead-up to Paris 2024, the Australian skateboard team, Team GB’s BMX freestyle team and the French national team have trained at Woodward facilities.
The U.S. boasts other high-level action sports facilities, such as the CA Training Facility (CATF), the world’s first high-performance center developed explicitly for skateboarding, and the Daniel Dhers Action Sports Complex in North Carolina, where many BMX freestyle athletes are based.
But Woodward’s parks and features—including crucial training tools like mini ramps, foam pits, airbags and resi ramps (a vert ramp featuring a thick layer of foam or padding covered in plastic composite to cushion falls)— and its coaching staff and programming keep athletes from around the world coming back to hone their skills.
Australia’s Kieran Woolley, a park skateboarder who competed at the Tokyo Games, spends much of his time training in the U.S. on an athlete visa.
“There are definitely some good parks in Australia, but nothing to the standard of Woodward or the CATF,” Woolley told me. “They are just kind of the standouts from around the world, really. When you think about skateboarding and progression, you want to get to Woodward PA or Woodward West and push yourself with a bunch of other really talented skateboarders.”
Woodward has always been progression-oriented, but that focus has sharpened in recent years through new development and programming, as well as increased investment in coaching, including a new coach academy.
In 2023, Woodward undertook a massive renovation at its Woodward Pennsylvania and Woodward West facilities. The brand also debuted new skate parks, including the 12,000-square-foot Street League Skateboarding (SLS) Plaza for advanced skaters and Sandlot East, modeled after skate program designer Ryan Sheckler’s personal training facility in California.
As Woodward built out its new facilities, it implemented a categorization system it calls the Woodward Intuitive Progression System (WIPS). The rubric categorizes features so that athletes can try new things at various skill levels as they progress from beginner to expert—perhaps even to pro.
“We know that most athletes aren’t going to get the chance to go to the Olympics, and so there’s also just instilling the love of the sport, which is equally as important,” Phoebe Mills, vice president, camp experiences and programming at Woodward, told me. “But for those that can make it all the way, we strive really hard at Woodward to have the facilities and the programming to help athletes do that.”
Mills has a unique vantage point to understand what athletes need from programming. She is a former Olympic gymnast who took bronze in the balance beam at the 1988 Seoul Games. She has coached snowboarding and was a snowboarding judge at the 2014 Sochi Games. Now she is based out of Woodward Park City, which she helped open in 2019.
“One of the things we’re working on is really developing our coaches, because in a lot of the action sports there aren’t robust places for them to get trained and get certified and really do the craft of coaching outside of summer camp,” Mills said.
Ryan Nyquist, one of the most decorated BMX riders of all time and the USA BMX national freestyle team coach, said that Woodward provides the “backbone” of his Olympic training regimen.
“Woodward has always had an open-door policy with [Olympic] athletes,” Nyquist told me.
Having served as a visiting pro at Woodward camps for more than 25 years, Nyquist has seen onetime campers go from their first tentative flip into a foam pit to, now, practicing never-before-done tricks ahead of the Olympics.
“It’s a great symbiotic relationship; kids at camp love seeing those top pros come through, seeing what’s possible, watching them ride and perfect their skills,” Nyquist said.
“A lot of top pros today talk about their time as campers at Woodward and those pros being visible at their sessions, having them as instructors, and how they guided them through that whole process. And they say, ‘I want to be that.’ It gives them that hero in a sport role they can look up to.”
The world’s top-ranked women’s BMX freestyle rider, Hannah Roberts, honed her skills at Woodward as a camper beginning a decade ago. So did Perris Benegas, who, along with Roberts, will represent the U.S. in women’s BMX freestyle at the Paris Games.
“The women just got their first medal event at X Games, and the grand majority of those women had been to Woodward and used the foam pits and resi ramps,” Nyquist said. “People just flock to where that environment exists, and the facilities, camps, events—Woodward has always had that. Their progression goes hand in hand with riding in those environments where they feel comfortable and safe.”
After competing in the Shanghai Olympic Qualifier Series (OQS) event, where she placed first and all but secured her Paris 2024 spot, Aussie skateboarder Arisa Trew and her coach, Trev Ward, traveled to Woodward West to work on her latest goal: to become the first woman in skateboarding to land a 900.
Trew had already been practicing the trick back home in Australia on a resi ramp. She started out on the resi ramp at Woodward but then quickly took the trick to the vert ramp. After 17 tries on the vert ramp, she successfully landed it, making history in the process.
Vert skateboarding, of course, is not currently on the Olympic program. But talented young skaters like Trew who are rapidly progressing the sport are showing the IOC that it may be wise to add the discipline for future Games alongside park and street.
If Trew represents one end of the skateboarding spectrum, 50-year-old Andy Macdonald represents the other. A vert and park trailblazer, Macdonald holds the record for most X Games medals in vert skateboarding and is well known for his and Tony Hawk’s jaw-dropping doubles performances.
But Macdonald isn’t done competing yet. What started as a whim—perhaps he should enter the qualification process for Paris 2024, so that he could travel the world and compete in some events—led to Macdonald getting his British passport to represent Team GB and then, shocking even himself, doing well enough in the OQS events to qualify for Paris.
This summer is Macdonald’s 33rd as a visiting pro at Woodward. In mid-July, he was there with his daughters, who were attending skate camp and parkour camp.
But suddenly, the skateboarding veteran was thinking about once again getting his own training in at Woodward.
“The first 720 I ever did in 1997 I did at Woodward, onto the resi,” Macdonald told me. “It’s also where I did my first lien rodeo backflip 180—into the foam pit first and then onto the resi ramp. Before that, I leared my first backflip into the foam pit. Before we even had foam pits, we were dragging mats from the gymnastics gym down to the skateboard ramps.”
“Woodward was the only place we could do that,” Macdonald added. “Now, skate parks have realized, ‘We can build a resi landing too.’ But Woodward was the orignal.”
Watch Woolley, Roberts, Benegas, Trew, Macdonald and 29 other Olympians show off the skateboarding and BMX tricks they honed at Woodward at Paris 2024.
Paris 2024 Olympians Who Have Trained At Woodward
Men’s Skateboard Street
- Jagger Eaton, USA *bronze medalist 2020-21 Tokyo Olympics
- Nyjah Huston, USA *2020-21 Tokyo Olympian
- Yuto Horigome, JPN *2020-21 Tokyo Olympic gold medalist
- Felipe Gustavo, BRA *2020-21 Tokyo Olympian
- Vincent Milou, FRA *2020/21 Tokyo Olympian
- Shane O’ Neill, AUS *2020/21 Tokyo Olympian
Women’s Skateboard Street
- Poe Pinson, USA
- Mariah Duran, USA *2020-21 Tokyo Olympian
- Haylie Powell, AUS
- Liv Lovelace, AUS
Men’s Skateboard Park
- Keegan Palmer, AUS *2020-21 Tokyo Olympic gold medalist
- Gavin Bottger, USA
- Kieran Woolley, AUS *2020-21 Tokyo Olympian
- Pedro Barros, BRA *2020-21 Tokyo Olympic silver medalist
- Danny Leon, ESP
- Keefer Wilson, AUS
- Alex Sorgente, ITA
- Vincent Matheron, FRA
- Andy Macdonald, GBR
Women’s Skateboard Park
- Kokona Hiraki, JPN *2020-21 Tokyo Olympic silver medalist
- Arisa Trew, AUS
- Bryce Wettstein, USA *2020-21 Tokyo Olympian
- Dora Varella, BRA
- Ruby Lilley, USA
- Minna Stess, USA
- Heili Sirvio, FIN
- Nana Taboulet, FRA
- Fay Ebert, CAN
- Emilie Alexandre, FRA
- Naia Laso, ESP
Women’s BMX Park
- Hannah Roberts, USA *2020/21 Tokyo Olympic Silver Medalist
- Perris Benegas, USA *2020/21 Tokyo Olympian
- Nikita Duccaroz *2020/21 Tokyo Olympic Bronze Medalist
Men’s BMX Park
- Kieran Reilly, GBR
- Marcus Christoper, USA
- Justin Dowell, USA