7 Badass Female Skateboarders on the Olympics, Their Favorite Tricks, and Empowering Young Women

One of the most talked about women in skateboarding, Brighton Zeuner holds the record for the youngest champion in X Games history — she won the day after her 13th birthday. Now 15, Brighton is an Olympic hopeful with her sights set on conquering not just the skateboarding world, but her other interests as well, including fashion design. "My mom and I, we cut up Vans shirts, we sew, we do all this stuff," she told POPSUGAR. To skate well in competition, she added, a good outfit is a requirement.

Despite her successes, Brighton admitted that before contests big and small, "I get really nervous, like really nervous." She's still figuring out how to deal with her nerves, but said she's found at least one thing that helps. One of the physical therapists on the tour ("she's like another mother to me") braided Brighton's hair and rubbed her back before a contest in June, "and I didn't really think about nerves," Brighton remembered. "For the Olympics, if I do make it, I just want to know how to deal with my nerves."

Australian Poppy Starr Olsen used to sell handmade greeting cards and jewelry to fund her skateboarding. She's still making art, and even spoke about it at a TEDx event in 2014. But as one of the up-and-coming skaters on the scene, Poppy's recent podium finishes have started to bring in more prize money along the way.

Skateboarding for Poppy is about both the competitions and the culture. "I can compete and try to make a better living out of it and chase competitions," she said, but "it's a lifestyle, too. I can skate when I'm in different countries and not competing and just hang out with my friends."

She's noticed competitions heating up and getting more intense in anticipation of the Olympics, which Poppy's trying to qualify for. But, she said, "Skateboarding's always going to be skateboarding." Global contests aside, she still skates because she loves the community and the sport, the adrenaline rush of speed and height when she flies out of the bowl. A perfect run, she said, feels "kind of like floating."

Jordyn Barratt was a surfer before she ever picked up a skateboard, but once she did, it was a "love at first sight kind of thing," she remembered. "Right away I had this huge love and passion for it."

Why? Hitting the perfect run in a bowl is "kind of like a magic carpet ride," Jordyn said. "You're floating and flying through the park. It's just like pure happiness and joy."

There's also the tight-knit skating community. Being part of it "is honestly like the best feeling in the world," Jordyn said. A shoulder injury forced her to drop out of the VPS World Championships, but she still showed up to support her friends from around the world. "When someone wins, it's like we all win," she said.

Up until the last couple of years, the women's skate scene in Australia was "very, very small," Shanae Collins told POPSUGAR. "Now with the boom in skating, there's so many more girls that have gotten into it. Young girls that are whipping out of nowhere. It's really f*cking sick."

Though Shanae isn't solely focused on making it into the Olympics, she said that its inclusion is more important than people might realize. "It's brought a big change in equality and skateboarding that really needed to happen." According to several skaters, skateboarding's Olympic debut has led to competitions offering equal prize money for men and women, a huge step forward in making the sport more equal. "I know there's people that have issues with skateboarding being in the Olympics and say that it's going to take the creativity out of skating," Shanae said. "But honestly, no one is forcing you to go to do these contests. It's just created something for other people to be able to make a living out of it."

One of the most successful female skaters in the world, Lizzie Armanto (left, with skateboarder Alex White) got her start in 2007 when she and her brother signed up for a local skate clinic. Twelve years later, she's won over 30 skateboarding awards and is the first (and only) woman to successfully skate Tony Hawk's infamous 360 loop (a ramp that literally goes in a circle).

Over those years, she said, "skateboarding has grown immensely," especially on the women's side. "We have seen the equality gap shrink. We have an equal number of events and prize money." Meanwhile, the level of competition within women's skateboarding has shot up. The distance between lower- and higher-ranked women is lessening, bringing the podium within reach to a bigger and more talented group of skaters.

(Read more about Lizzie's journey, experiences with sexism, and Olympic plans here.)

French skateboarder Shani Bru started skating when a park got built in her hometown. "I was with a lot of boys," she remembered. "I was at the skate park every day with the guys. So I was like, okay, I'm going to try to skate and try to do the same and have fun with them." What she loves about skateboarding is the freedom — a theme we heard from many other skaters. "You can do whatever you want," she explained. "Nobody is telling you what kind of tricks you have to do, where you have to go." Shani's interested in the Olympics, too, but said it's not make or break. "It's not something I have to do. I'm just trying to do my best."

Women's skateboarding, meanwhile, is "getting better and better," she told POPSUGAR. "I think there's a lot of people now who see that girls are skating and that's something normal."

Grace Marhoefer's introduction to skateboarding was "the most random thing," she told POPSUGAR: her neighbor had a birthday party at a skate park. "I was just like, 'Oh. . . I kind of like this!'" Fast forward a few years and Grace was finishing sixth at the 2019 Vans Park Series World Championships in a loaded field. "The girls are just dominating right now," Grace said. "Their airs are getting bigger, their tricks are getting better. Girls skateboarding is definitely about to take over. It's going to get big."

The Olympics, she said, are going to be the place to prove it. Grace herself "would love" to go to Tokyo. "It's the Olympics! Even qualifying for the Olympics — I would cry, that would be so cool."

Grace's favorite trick is called an eggplant: going upside down on the lip of the bowl and holding a one-armed handstand while holding onto the board with your other hand. (Keep reading to see what that looks like, because it's even cooler than it sounds.) Making it as a pro skater seems to mean nailing that trick and many others, left and right — no easy feat, but Grace offered some advice to girls wanting to try the sport. "You got it. Don't give up. If somebody says something bad, don't listen to them. You do you and you'll get there."

From left to right, skateboarders Alana Smith, Spencer Breaux, and Grace Marhoefer.