Mindful of the balance between not reiterating a lot of what has been said before versus not assuming too much prior knowledge on behalf of the new readership we have picked up along the course of the World Skateboarding Tour (and if that includes you, welcome!)- let’s roll back a bit before dropping in again. The reason for that slightly obtuse intro is that the WST Park World Championships of 2024 are being held in the same location as last year.

All photos: Kenji Haruta

Let’s unpack a little here: the World Skateboarding Tour emulates other professional sporting tours in that it mixes new destinations with fixed stars of orientation. Tennis, for example, is always going to have Wimbledon, Roland Garros and Cincinnati among whatever new destinations they bring the sport to. Golf will always feature Augusta and Saint Andrews.

For us on the WST, Rome will always form a fixed star because, as World Skate’s HQ, we can always guarantee the warmest of Italian welcomes and all the organisational benefits of our integration into the sporting, political and municipal life of one of the world’s great nations- which includes two kick-ass locations, both for Street and Park.

We might presume that you tuned in for last week’s Street bedlam from the Colle Oppio overlooking the Colosseum, but let’s briefly introduce you to The Spot Skatepark where this week’s Park World Championship is about to go down.

Italy’s most famous skatepark was once Bologna, built in 2004 by Dreamland. In 2007, however, it was eclipsed by The Spot, a tremendous community endeavour which took a plot of derelict land beside a food market in the seaside neighbourhood of Ostia just outside of Rome’s city limits. The founders turned the forgotten space into an international-standard skatepark which runs daily community projects and has become a focal point for youth culture not just in the municipality but beyond.

Rome’s local hero Alessandro Mazzara uses this park as his training ground while he does battle with Park skateboarding’s global elite, and now he acts as an informal host as the who’s who of the skateboarding world descend on Ostia as one of the cornerstones of the World Skateboarding Tour. Being a WST fixture allows the Spot Skatepark to fulfil its foundational promise to act as a beacon to the Italian youth of the Lazio region and beyond, who can now come along and see skateboarders from 36 nations compete at an elite level in the same skatepark they ride after school. No wonder the stands are packed for two days solid: how many new Ale Mazzara’s lie among their number?

The other aspect of what is great about having pivotal WST events in Italy is that it brings international skateboard culture back to one of the last European nations where backpackers can still experience Mediterranean living on a shoestring budget.

Since the Slam Trick contest series in Ravenna ended close to twenty years ago, not only has Italy been denied an annual international skate event, but skateboarders from around the world had been denied a reason to congregate in the land of good life on a small budget. That bohemian edge was in no small part was what the original ‘Summer In Europe’ skateboard culture of the 411 Video Magazine era was based upon. No need for nostalgia- those good times are back, here and now.

So for all those reasons combined, WST Ostia Park World Championship 2024 feels like a sort of homecoming; chuck in the fact that it is part of the World Skate Games taking place throughout Italy at the same time including similar championships in Vert, Downhill, Slalom and Street and you are looking at the biggest tribal gathering of skateboarding certainly since the infancy of the X-Games. Plus its in Italy!

So what’s not to love?

125 skateboarders from all over our lovely planet have entered; the beach is literally two minutes’ walk from the skatepark- and there is a quarter of a million dollars up for grabs.

Who else is going to offer you a sentence like that?

We will be broadcasting the best Park skateboarding you will ever see live from Italy this weekend: you know what to do!