July, and with it Britain’s unexpected ongoing heatwave provided the backdrop for Skateboard GB’s 2026 National Park Championship which returned for a second year to Cornwall, England’s remotest and yet rapidly becoming most skateboard-adjacent county last weekend.
All photography: Leo Sharp Esq.
Alongside the peninsular outcrop’s long surfing history and original 1970’s skateparks like Playing Place, Cornwall now also boasts three excellent indoor parks in the form of Mount Hawke, TR7 and Love Park which maintain an unbroken skateboarding lineage that has seen skateboarders from across the UK gravitate there over recent years to session alongside the established skateboarding luminaries like Stu Titmus, Pin Osborne and the Smith brothers Leo and Jody, all of whom helped put the county on the skateboarding map before now.
It is to the excellent Concrete Waves outdoor park that our attention turns, however, for the Skateboard GB Championships, the first leg of their two annual National deciders, the second of which concludes with Street in London on September 12th, and from which we will also report.
At the end of a swelteringly-hot weekend (which is by no means a given even during British summertime) 17-year-old Tay Cunningham doubled down on his best-ever World Skateboarding Tour result of 21st in Rome last month to claim his third back-to back UK Championship title and confirm himself as the man to beat in British Park skateboarding.
It was all change in the Women’s division, however, as 13-year-old Olive Newman- who is a comparative WST newcomer having only entered two Tour stops to date- stole a march on the entire field to become Women’s UK Park Champion for 2026, in what will be a massive confidence boost for her as a new British skateboarding star is born the basking heat of Newquay.
As ever, big ups to Skateboard GB for putting on one of the events of what is already an historic British summer, and one for which the British skateboarding industry is no doubt thankful amongst the drought currently being experienced there.
Knucks all round, and roll on September in London!
Men’s Results
- Tay Cunningham
- George O’Neill
- Alex Hallford
- Jack Wallbridge
- Harry While
- Scotti Cammarota
- Harry Reilly
- Alex Griffiths
Women’s Results
- Olive Newman
- Lola Tambling
- Mara Ilg Castro
- Holly Tyack
- Sophie Tyas
- Free Clarkson
- Ashlea Hooker
- Lilly Strachan
