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50 free Skate trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
47 free Skate trivia questions with answers. Skate trivia built for people who know the difference between a kickflip and a heelflip — and for anyone who wants to. Most of this quiz is skateboarding: how surfers invented "sidewalk surfing", the urethane wheel that saved the sport, the empty pools of the 1976 drought, the Z-Boys, Alan Gelfand's ollie, Rodney Mullen's flip tricks, Tony Hawk's 900 and the teenagers who won skateboarding's first Olympic medals. Because "skate" means more than one thing, the last stretch covers ice and roller skating too: bone skates from Finland, figure skating's Olympic debut, Sonja Henie, the Elfstedentocht, quad skates and roller derby. Questions run from easy to expert and every answer was checked against encyclopaedic and official sources, so the facts hold up at the skatepark or the pub quiz.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What did Californian surfers originally call skateboarding?
Sidewalk surfing
Early skaters rode barefoot and copied surfing moves, and the first manufactured boards were ordered by a Los Angeles surf shop.
Q 02What were the very first skateboards made from?
Boxes or boards with roller-skate wheels
The rough home-made contraptions date to the late 1940s or early 1950s.
Q 03In the early 1970s Frank Nasworthy revived skateboarding by developing wheels made from what material?
Polyurethane
He called his company Cadillac Wheels; modern wheels are extremely hard, around 99A on the durometer scale.
Q 04A 1976 California drought helped launch "vert" skating because skaters started riding what?
Empty swimming pools
Ty Page, Bruce Logan and the Z-Boys were among the first to carve the vertical walls of pools left empty by water restrictions.
Q 05The Z-Boys skate team was sponsored by a surf shop in which California neighbourhood?
Santa Monica
Jeff Ho, Skip Engblom and Craig Stecyk opened the shop in 1973 and recruited local kids from the "Dogtown" area.
Q 06Which future filmmaker was a member of the Z-Boys alongside Tony Alva and Jay Adams?
Stacy Peralta
He later co-founded Powell Peralta and directed the documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys.
Q 07Who invented the no-hands aerial that became known as the ollie?
Alan Gelfand
He developed it in Florida in the mid-1970s, and it stayed a largely Florida trick until his first trip to California in 1978.
Q 08Rodney Mullen debuted the flatground ollie at the 1982 Rusty Harris contest in which California city?
Whittier
He adapted the vertical version by combining the motions of some of his existing freestyle tricks.
Q 09What did other skaters nickname Rodney Mullen's 1982 kickflip because they couldn't work out how he did it?
The Magic Flip
Mullen himself initially called it the "Ollie Flip".
Q 10Rodney Mullen has been given what nickname for his influence on the sport?
The godfather of modern street skating
He is credited with inventing the flatground ollie, kickflip, heelflip, impossible and 360-kickflip.
Q 11On which attempt did Tony Hawk finally land the first documented 900 at the 1999 X Games?
His 12th
He performed what he said would be his final 900 exactly 17 years later, aged 48.
Q 12How many mid-air revolutions does a 900 involve?
Two and a half
900 degrees of rotation, hence the name.
Q 13What is the name of Tony Hawk's skateboard company?
Birdhouse
He refinanced his house to keep it afloat; within five years of skateboarding's comeback it was making $25 million a year.
Q 14At what age did Tony Hawk turn professional?
Q 21A standard skateboard deck is usually made from how many plies of maple plywood?
7–8
The wheels are attached beneath by a pair of metal trucks, which riders can swap and tune to taste.
Q 22What are the metal parts called that hold a skateboard's wheels to the deck?
Trucks
Tracker made the first purpose-built ones for skateboarding in 1976.
Q 23Skateboarding made its Olympic debut at which Games?
Tokyo 2020
The decision to add it was approved in August 2016, and it was one of four new sports on the programme.
Q 24What are the two skateboarding disciplines contested at the Olympics?
14
He signed with Powell Peralta and became famous through the Bones Brigade videos.
Q 15According to Bobby Kotick, how much was Tony Hawk offered for his name on the original Pro Skater?
$300,000
Kotick claimed Hawk was living in his car at the time due to money problems; the franchise went on to spawn eight annual sequels.
Q 16Which studio developed the original Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, released in 1999?
Neversoft
It launched on the PlayStation and was later ported to the Nintendo 64, Game Boy Color, Dreamcast and N-Gage.
Q 17The Skate video game series is known for what trick-control system?
Flick-it
Players perform tricks with quick movements of the analog sticks rather than button combos, and a "Hall of Meat" system tracks broken bones.
Q 18Where were the inaugural X Games held in the summer of 1995?
Rhode Island
They were staged in Providence and Newport, and the Winter X Games followed in 1997.
Q 19Which network founded the X Games?
ESPN
The property was sold to a private equity firm in late 2022, though the events still air on ESPN and ABC.
Q 20Thrasher magazine was founded in 1981 mainly to promote which business its founders owned?
Independent Trucks
Fausto Vitello and Eric Swenson used the magazine to push their trucks; it also hands out the coveted Skater of the Year title.
Park and street
Each event had 20 competitors, with one place reserved for the host nation.
Q 25How old was Momiji Nishiya when she won the first-ever Olympic women's street gold in Tokyo?
13
At 13 years and 330 days she became Japan's youngest Olympic champion and the third-youngest gold medallist in Olympic history.
Q 26Sky Brown became Great Britain's youngest-ever Olympic medallist by winning which medal in Tokyo?
Bronze in park
She repeated the feat with another park bronze in Paris in 2024, and had already won Dancing with the Stars: Juniors.
Q 27Street-skating star Nyjah Huston won his first Olympic medal at Paris 2024. Which medal was it?
Bronze
By then he had already won 15 X Games golds and more contest prize money than any skateboarder in history.
Q 28The 1975 Del Mar National Championships, a landmark comeback contest, drew up to how many competitors?
500
It was where the Zephyr team's aggressive surf-style skating stunned a crowd used to freestyle spins.
Q 29Which 1964 song by Jan and Dean reworked a Beach Boys tune with skateboarding lyrics?
Sidewalk Surfin'
It borrowed the melody of "Catch a Wave" at the height of the first skateboard craze.
Q 30Which company made the first purpose-built skateboard axle hardware, in 1976?
Tracker
Until then boards borrowed roller-skate hardware.