20 June 2024 – Over 450 athletes from more than 120 National Federations are competing in breaking, BMX freestyle, skateboarding and sport climbing. The four days in Budapest will decide which 150 athletes across the four sports qualify for Paris next month.

IOC President Thomas Bach is in the Hungarian capital for the festival-like event, in which entry to the public is free, and 10,000 spectators daily can enjoy the mix of sport, music and culture, with the public invited to get involved and try new sports.

“It is a very good atmosphere, which is combining the joy of sport, the culture of these urban sports and the determination to make their individual Olympic dreams come true,” said President Bach, who joined in with the fun, trying out a skateboard before chatting with competitors and spectators.

The event is taking place in an Urban Park at the Ludovika Campus, a university campus centrally located in Budapest, which offers a 26-hectare green, park-like environment and includes a variety of indoor and outdoor sports facilities.

The competition started on Thursday with preliminaries in two of the sports – skateboarding and sport climbing – ahead of a weekend of finals across all four sports.

15-year-old skateboarding sensation Sky Brown from Great Britain led the qualifiers in the Women’s Park Preliminaries. All three of her runs were impressive, but the Tokyo 2020 bronze medallist produced the best score of the day (86.88) with her final run.

The Men’s Street Prelims took place later and it was Toa Sasaki from Japan who led the way with a brilliant first run, his score of 91.41 enough to finish top of the 43 competitors, with 16 skateboarders advancing to the semi-final on Saturday.

In the Men’s Boulder & Lead Belgian Hannes Van Duysen finished higher than two formidable climbers – Tokyo 2020 gold medalist Alberto Gines Lopez of Spain in third, and Adam Ondra of Czechia in second.

In the Women’s event Tokyo silver medalist Miho Nonaka was near-perfect in qualifying to finish top of the standings. American Brooke Raboutou was third on the day having finished first in Shanghai, and talked about the high profile of the Olympic events:

“Definitely more of the world is watching so it is a bigger stage, quite rigorous, it’s been a lot of hard work, competitions and practice going into this.”

The event will culminate on Olympic Day, Sunday 23 June, with special activities organised by the Hungarian Olympic Committee to celebrate the occasion.

All competitions can be viewed live on Olympics.com and the Olympics app with detailed scheduling and additional information also available on Olympics.com.