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Skateboarding will be an Olympic event for the first time this month.

One of the new events to make its debut during the Tokyo Summer Olympics 2021 is, surprisingly, skateboarding. Advocates for the sport have been calling for its inclusion in the Olympics for decades; it certainly wouldn’t be out of place with the likes gymnastics and ice-skating, as it too requires qualities like coordination, balance, and a pinch of style. However, while the event’s inclusion is already a long-since settled matter, some skateboarding enthusiasts are a little wary of having an official Olympic event based around a hobby that, for a long time, was a symbol of freedom and counterculture.

“I think as a community, people were attracted to skateboarding because it was not part of something like the Olympics; it was not mainstream,” said Ian Michna, editor of skateboarding publication Jenkem Magazine. “It was more of an artistic activity you could do on your own independently and shape your own way, be your own person and express yourself.”

“Now with skateboarding becoming commodified by the Olympics and them turning it into a sport with numbers and statistics and putting values on ‘tricks’ and things that were genuinely once just movements of expression, some people are going to say, ‘This is not in the spirit of skating,’” Michna said.

Action sport dreams really do come true… we're stoked to see Skateboard and BMX Freestyle at the Olympics this summer! ☀️

Tony Hawk: A push can change everything. #StrongerTogether #Tokyo2020 @Olympics

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“I have a bit of a mixed feeling, obviously, about the Olympics because I feel like we were never looking for their validation,” skateboarding legend Tony Hawk told Yahoo! Finance in March, though he added that he understood “the benefits of it, and I’m excited that these places where people have been discouraged from skating will now be embraced for it.”

“For the individual skateboarder, it’s probably not going to change anything. People are still going to go out and skate, they’re still going to go out to the parks, are still going to hang out with their buddies,” said former pro skater-turned podcaster Chris Roberts. “All I hope and a lot of people hope, I think, is that it brings more money into skateboard companies who can then support the skateboarders because a lot of them are living paycheck to paycheck and without health insurance.”