Skateboard Training Gets The Olympic Treatment

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The world’s first high performance skateboard training facility is here.

Out of the backyard pools and into the mainstream, California’s about to get its first-ever elite skateboard training facility. With skateboarding hitting the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo in less than two years, a new project promises to deliver the terrain and tools to help aspiring skaters reach their golden dreams. And it will not just be the first of its kind in California but is being billed as “the world’s first and only high-performance center developed explicitly for Olympic-level contest skateboarding.”

Who’s Behind CA | TF?

Designed and built by California Skateparks—the creators of parks for the X Games, the Dew Tour and Vans Park Series— the CA | TF project is being developed in Vista, California, right in the heart of the West Coast skate industry. It will feature a full-size concert competition Street Course and Park Course, as well as other state-of-the-art features to help the world’s best skaters perform at their best.

“The courses will be designed and built to feel like a real contest environment featuring elements common to competition courses, including time clocks, judging stands and spectator viewing,” reads California Skateparks’ literature.

What Is CA | TF?

Of course, if that were all it was, the argument could be made that CA | TF is just another fancy skatepark, but that’s hardly the case. It’s the services provided in accompaniment with the facility that’s really defines the project, after all, the devil’s always in the details.

‘Top-shelf coaching and instruction ensures that techniques and style are a top priority when it comes to helping skaters excel.’

Amenities like lockers and showers mean that skaters can come in, train hard, get sweaty and dirty, and then clean up their act when they’re done. An athlete lounge offers a place to chill, while a multimedia lounge provides the opportunity to analyze video and really breakdown the nuances of any given trick or session.

Who Can Access CA | TF?

To ensure that everyone gets the most of their experience at CA | TF, they’ve set up three different membership levels. The basic level their “Training Program,” which “will be based on engaging the students to have fun while learning the fundamentals of skateboarding. Classes will focus on board awareness, confidence building, balance, and safety.”

Then there’s the “International Program,” which has been specifically designed to meet the needs of international skate teams that are eager to get some training time in.

“This will allow non-residential teams to have private training lessons and to also skate with local elite pro members and to receive personal coaching from our professional coaching staff,” reads the website.

And finally, there’s the Elite Membership, which only available upon invitation. It provides athletes (i.e. skaters) with the 24-hour access to the facility, as well as private sessions and access to all of the various lounges, lockers and showers.

As this article goes to press the concrete at CA | TF is curing and the facility is nearing completion. When it was announced that skateboarding would be a featured sport in the 2020 Olympic Games we all knew it was going to change the game. The CA | TF project is proof positive that the future of high-performance skateboard training is at hand.

Photo credits: CA Productions

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Jake Howard

Jake Howard writes about surfing for a living, and after 15-plus years on the job is still baffled that he's been able keep the hustle going this long.

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