The 21 Best Female Skateboarders of All Time (2026 Ranking)

The first professional skater in history, regardless of gender. In 1964 she won the women's division at the first national championships in Santa Monica, and in 1965 she joined the Hobie Super Surfer team, landed on the cover of Life magazine doing her famous handstand on the board, and ended up on Johnny Carson's show. All of that when skating didn't even have its own name as a sport yet.

In 2010 she became the first woman inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame. She passed away in October 2024, at 79, with the recognition that had been denied to her for decades finally where it belonged.

The only woman on the original Zephyr team, the Z-Boys from Venice who changed skating forever in the mid-70s. Jay Adams recruited her, and at the legendary 1975 Del Mar contest (the one from the Dogtown and Z-Boys documentary) she won the women's freestyle with that low, surf-influenced style that was the team's signature.

She was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2012. Today she's an artist and environmental activist: her Origami Whales Project has been campaigning against whale hunting for years.

The first woman on the cover of Thrasher (1989) and the first to have a signature shoe with a major brand, with Vans in the late 90s. She was also an Olympic snowboarder: fourth in halfpipe at Nagano 1998 with the first U.S. team. She's the only person to have gold medals at both the Summer and Winter X Games.

Her biggest legacy came off the ramp: in 2005, fed up with the men's vert winner taking home $50,000 while the women's winner got $2,000, she co-founded the Action Sports Alliance with Mimi Knoop and forced ESPN's hand — equal prize money, announced in 2008. Hall of Fame inductee in 2015.

In 1996, Toy Machine included her part in Welcome to Hell without once mentioning she was a woman. It didn't need to: she was skating real street, out on actual streets, at the same level as the rest of the team. It's considered the first female street part in a major skate video ever, and three years later she became the first playable female skater in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.

She picked up four street gold medals at the X Games (2004, 2005, 2006 and 2008), a women's record that stood for fifteen years. Today she skates for Nike SB and runs her own brand, Gnarhunters. Few careers have shaped modern women's skateboarding as much as hers.

Hawaiian raised on the New York City streets, she went pro with Real in 1993 and in April 1994 landed a historic Thrasher cover: the second woman to do it, the first female street skater, and the first person of color to ever make the cover. In the 90s, when street skating was a closed men's club, she was hitting the same NYC spots as anyone else.

The official recognition took a while, but it came: in May 2025 she was inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame. Her original cover is now held by the Smithsonian.

When the X Games finally opened women's competition in 2003, after years of pressure from the skaters themselves, Vanessa Torres won the first event in history. That gold makes her the first women's skate champion at the X Games — the starting point for everything that came after.

Her career ran way longer than that one day: two decades as a pro holding it down in an industry that treated women as an afterthought when it came to pay and promotion. The Olympic champions competing today are skating on ground she leveled.

Five vert medals at the X Games, though her most important contribution came off the ramp: in 2005 she co-founded the Action Sports Alliance with Cara-Beth Burnside, the group that negotiated with ESPN until they secured equal pay for men and women at the X Games. They pulled it off: announced in 2008, effective from 2009.

She later co-founded Hoopla, one of the first board brands focused on women, and went on to coach the U.S. national team at the Tokyo Games. Few people have done more for what female skaters actually take home.

In November 2009, at Tony Hawk's show in Paris, Lyn-Z Adams Hawkins landed the first 540 McTwist ever done by a woman. The trick Mike McGill had invented 25 years earlier finally had a female version, and the psychological barrier of big vert rotations was shattered for every woman who came after.

She dominated women's vert and Mega Ramp in the late 2000s, and today is part of the Nitro Circus family alongside her husband, Travis Pastrana.

She won the first women's gold in park at the X Games in 2013, and in August 2018, after hours of attempts, she became the first woman to complete Tony Hawk's loop, the 360-degree vertical loop Hawk had debuted twenty years earlier. Hawk had signed her to Birdhouse, where she was their first female pro.

Holding dual citizenship, she decided in 2019 to compete for Finland and went on to skate at the Tokyo Games. She was also the third woman on the cover of Thrasher, the first in 24 years. Technical, fearless, and one of the most well-rounded transition skaters of her generation.

The face of women's skate throughout the entire 2010s. Guinness certified in 2022 her two records: 12 women's medals at the summer X Games (6 golds, 3 silvers, 3 bronzes) and the most golds in women's street, with five. She competed for Brazil in Tokyo and landed more covers and campaigns than any other skater of her generation, male or female.

Her total gold record has since been surpassed by the new wave (Arisa Trew), but the road between the underpaid pioneers and today's Olympic prodigies was largely paved by her. In 2025 she was named a founding athlete of the new X Games League.

She showed up at 16 in PJ Ladd's Wonderful Horrible Life (2002), one of the most revered videos in history, and then did something almost unheard of in skating: hit pause to study. She graduated from Columbia and got a master's in architecture from MIT while stacking 7 street medals at the X Games, three of them gold.

In Tokyo, at 34, she finished less than a point away from an Olympic bronze. At Paris 2024 she came back as head coach of the U.S. women's team.

Competing as Lacey Baker, he won X Games medals and contest titles for a decade, with the kind of technical style you study in slow motion. In 2020 he had an almost guaranteed spot at Tokyo with the U.S. team and walked away from it: competition only recognized him under his previous name, and transitioning couldn't wait for the Games.

The Netflix documentary Stay on Board (2022) tells that story. Today he skates for Nike SB and co-founded Glue Skateboards, the queer brand opening the door skate kept shut for too long.

She worked four years in the Welcome Skateboards offices until the brand turned her into their first female pro in August 2017. That same year she won the Vans Park Series world championship and also became the first woman on the Adidas Skateboarding global team.

Her fluid style and personality — part seventies surf, part comic book artist — made her one of the most beloved skaters of her generation. Proof that you can make it to the top without going through the contest mold.

Her silver in street at the 2017 X Games Minneapolis was, according to coverage at the time, the first skateboarding medal won by a Black woman in the history of the event. That same year Enjoi turned her pro with her own board, and her power on rails put her on every part-of-the-year list.

In a discipline with a long-standing diversity problem, Brevard opened a door that others have walked through since.

From Albuquerque, New Mexico, far from any skate mecca. In 2018 she won street gold at the X Games in Minneapolis and repeated in Sydney that same year, cementing herself as the best street skater in the U.S. of her generation. In Tokyo she competed as an Olympian with the first American skateboarding team in history.

Pro for Meow Skateboards (the brand that brought women's skating back when nobody wanted to sponsor them) and on the Adidas team.

On July 26, 2021, at 13 years old, she won the first ever women's street gold medal in Olympic history in Tokyo, becoming Japan's youngest Olympic champion and one of the youngest in any country across any sport. She did it on home soil, with the ease of someone skating their local skatepark.

She then proved it was no fluke: street gold at the 2022 X Games at 14, and more medals stacking up since then.

The fairy. At 7, a clip of her doing a heelflip in a fairy dress went viral when Tony Hawk shared it. At 13, Olympic silver in Tokyo, the youngest medalist in Brazilian history. At 16, bronze in Paris 2024. And in between, four consecutive Super Crowns at Street League (2022–2025), something no woman had ever done.

In 2024 Nike gave her her own SB Dunk, and she arrived in Paris as the most sponsored athlete in the entire Brazilian delegation. At 17, she's one of the most influential skaters out there right now.

Pro at 10, the youngest in the world. Bronze at the Tokyo Olympics at 13 (the youngest medallist in British history) and another bronze at Paris 2024... one week after dislocating her shoulder. In between: park gold at the 2021 X Games, first woman to land a frontside 540 at the X Games, and two park world championships (2023 and 2025).

Half Japanese, half British, raised between waves and ramps (she competes in surfing too), she's the most recognizable face of the Olympic generation outside of skating. Inside it, she's simply one of the best.

The Australian is rewriting the limits of what's possible in women's skating: first woman to land a 720 (2023, at 13) and first to land a 900 (May 2024, Guinness-certified, at 14). Two months after the 900, Olympic gold in park at Paris, the youngest Olympic champion in Australian history.

At X Games Osaka 2025 she won park and vert, bringing her total to eight golds: the all-time women's record at the event. The rotation records that took men's skating thirty years to reach, she hit at 13 and 14.

Olympic silver in Tokyo at 12 years old: the youngest Olympic medalist in 85 years, since 1936, and the youngest in Japanese history. At Paris 2024 she repeated silver at 15, becoming the only skater with two Olympic silvers in park.

Among so many prodigies, what sets her apart is consistency: always in the final, always on the podium, always with an uncommon ease in the air.

On July 28, 2024, at the Place de la Concorde in Paris, Coco Yoshizawa (14 years old) came back in the final round against her compatriot Liz Akama (15) and took the Olympic street gold with 272.75 points. A Japanese one-two and a generational shift in a single final: Tokyo champion Nishiya already had even younger successors waiting in line.

Japan has won both Olympic street gold medals in women's history, and the pipeline coming up behind suggests that's not changing anytime soon.