There is speculation that the skateboarding will feature both separate street and skatepark events. However, it has been confirmed that the five new sports will add 18 events to the Olympic program. Assuming all five have both male and female competitions, that accounts for ten of the 18 events already. Separate skatepark and street skating events would account for a further two, leaving only six, which means that the Karate would only have three weight divisions for both men and women.

All of this is a rather complicated mathematical equation that basically means that separate park and street events in skateboarding is actually highly unlikely.

While the announcement has been widely celebrated by many, there are purists from both skateboarding and surfing that suggest freestyle activities have no place in the Olympics, and that their inclusion is “compromising the integrity of an art form”. However, in May this year, Mpora spoke to some experts in the field about what they thought about skateboarding as an Olympic sport, and their conclusion was, basically, just to relax about the whole thing.

Have You Ever Seen Anything Like The BMX Course for the Rio 2016 Games

It’s inevitable that there will be detractors, but on the whole, we think that the inclusion of Surfing and skateboarding in the Olympics, along with climbing, is a good thing. When we spoke to Iain Borden, a Professor of Architecture and Urban Culture at University College London earlier this year, he told us that the inclusion of Skateboarding in the Olympics would, in his opinion, “Create more interest in skateboarding and more demand for products. There will be more people skating and buying product and reading websites and magazines, and their advertising will go up.”

“There will be more money in marketing budgets to support art projects, to keep up the pressure on councils for parks and for schools to have skateboarding as part of the PE curriculum. The indirect benefits generally could be quite large.”