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Skateboarding's art, authenticity take flight at the Olympics

Team USA skaters reveal how they think becoming an Olympic sport might impact skateboarding's unique culture.

Video transcript

MARIAH DURAN: This journey to the Olympics has been crazy. I mean, this is the first year for skateboarding in the Olympics. So you know, we're kind of paving the way for the people after us.

HELMANA REYNOLDS: Really excited for skateboarding to finally be a part of the Olympics, and really excited for skateboarding to be kind of recognized as like a real sport I guess.

BRYCE WETTSTEIN: Competition in the games it's really going to fulfill skateboarding, and let everyone know that anybody can do it because it doesn't have to stick to one thing. It can be an art and a sport together. And I think that's what makes it such a beautiful thing.

HELMANA REYNOLDS: I think that once it's in the Olympics, it's just going to be an awesome way to open the eyes of people who don't really know much about skateboarding. In a way, my family runs a skate school. We do clinics, and camps, and stuff like that.

Just from that, I know that a lot of parents don't particularly choose skateboarding as the sport they want their child to do. They like no, how am I going to do football? I want my kid to do soccer. I want my kid to do that. Because of what they think of skateboarding just without knowing anything.

MARIAH DURAN: It's not the ideal sport that everybody goes for because you can't really get scholarships or whatever like that. But I feel like now at being in the Olympics a conversation for people to start skating will be a little bit more easier with the parents like allowing their kids to do it because now it's like OK, well, there's a future.

BRYCE WETTSTEIN: I think the competition is definitely going to inline skateboarding because it's going to lift away the boundaries that people thought were on skateboarding. It's going to kind of give it this beautiful life.