For Amelia Brodka, the X Games were an inspiration. As a teen, she watched a women’s vert demo at the 2002 summer X Games in Philadelphia and craved the exhilaration of dropping down the slick, steep sides of the ramp and the thrill of doing a kickflip above the lip.
Women’s vert was added to the official X Games lineup a year later, but Brodka never got a chance to drop in. In 2010, she qualified as an alternate. The next spring, ESPN, the parent company of the action sports tour, announced it was dropping women’s vert. X Games was the last major women’s vert competition and among the reasons given for the cut was flagging interest in the discipline.
Women’s vert may have fallen out of favor, but like the skaters who love it (and who have had many a fall themselves), it kept rolling. Now, a dozen years later, it’s poised for a resurgence. And Salt Lake City may well go down as its incubator.
Tony Hawk debuted his Vert Alert here three years ago with the intent of reviving the sport that made him one of the most well-known athletes on the planet. If this weekend’s free competition is any indication, he’s well on his way to doing just that. Not only will it move from the Utah State Fairpark to the Delta Center, but it will serve as a qualifier for the 2023 X Games California in men’s vert, vert best trick and — wait for it — women’s vert.
“I’m just trying to give vert more of a venue and more of a voice in the world of skateboarding,” Hawk told the Tribune. “And this event is exactly that.”
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Skaters are silhouetted in the late evening sun during Tony Hawk’s Vert Alert, a big-air skateboarding competition at the Utah Sate Fairpark on Friday, Aug. 26, 2022.
Vert is one of the most classic and dynamic skateboarding disciplines. The halfpipe ramp was designed to resemble the sides of an empty swimming pool, which is how the style originated, and later became the inspiration for the halfpipe used in snowboarding and skiing. The steep ramp gives skaters the speed they need to fly above the walls and perform grabs, ollies and up to 1,080-degree turns. Hawk pointed out that park and street skaters adapt many of those tricks, usually on a smaller scale.
When the X Games dropped women’s vert from its schedule, Brodka turned to street skating and even competed for her native Poland in the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, taking sixth. She didn’t give up on vert, though. In fact, in 2012 in direct response to the X Games’s decision, Brodka started her own successful competition. Dubbed Exposure, it is one of a handful of events that maintained the sport’s lifeblood through the gap.
Still, she heaps credit on Hawk for creating a space for vert and putting it back in the public eye.
“I know he’s a very humble dude, but hands down to Tony for bringing women’s vert back to X Games and for all the work that he’s done with Vert Alert,” she said. “He knows that vert skating is growing, it just doesn’t get seen outside of warehouses and backyard vert ramps often enough.”
This year’s Vert Alert will have a much broader reach. Friday and Saturday’s competitions will be aired live on the X Games’ YouTube and Twitch channels. Portions of the event will also air on ESPN in early July.
Just as the reach is growing, so too is the potential audience. According to a report released Monday by the Outdoor Industry Association, skateboarding as a whole is one of the fastest growing recreational activities in the United States. Nine million more Americans went skateboarding in 2022 than in 2021, a growth of more than 33%.
Brodka said judging from the interest in her events, most of those newcomers are girls and women.
Much of that growth was seeded in the pandemic, when people were looking for individual outdoor activities. Skateboarding also got a jolt of attention after Tokyo selected it as one of four provisional sports to feature in its Olympics. But Jeff Robbins, the president and CEO of the Utah Sports Commission, said he thinks the Vert Alert and Hawk’s dedication bringing vert back to the limelight played a role as well.
“I think some of what we’re doing here is you always look at ‘Where do we think the fastest growing sports are? Where do we think things are trending in the future?’” Robbins said. “And so having Tony here, having the assets that we have in the community and in the state in terms of skateboarding, [such as] the Fair Park and the other places, is great. I think it’ll encourage people to get out and skate.”
Woodward Park City will be holding free skate clinics on the plaza outside the Delta Center both Friday and Saturday for anyone who wants to try the sport or brush up on their skills.
Inside, because of the X Games tie-in, the lineup will include some of the world’s best vert skaters. Brodka will compete in the women’s event alongside Vert World Championship bronze medalist Lilly Stoephasius and defending Vert Alert women’s champion Bryce Wettstein. The men’s event is expected to include 2022 vert world champion and 2023 X Games Japan champion Edouard Damestoy as well as the X Games Japan bronze medalist Jimmy Wilkins and legend Bucky Lasek.
The top six finishers in the men’s and women’s events, as well as the top eight in the best trick competition, will qualify for the 2023 X Games California. That event will be held July 16-23 in Ventura.
Speaking of legends, several have committed to throw down in Friday night’s Legends showcase. Lasek will be among them, as well as Sandro Dias, Lyn-Z Adams Hawkins Pastrana and, of course, Hawk.
“It’s my ramp,” said Hawk, who participated in 2022 despite breaking his femur a few months earlier. “So if it’s my ramp, I’m going to be on it.”
And who knows? Maybe the female version of Tony Hawk will be in the stands watching and, like Brodka, realizing she was born to skate.
