Petaluma Skateboarder Gets Ready To Make Her Mark at the Summer Olympics

Minna Stess, 18, was the first American ever to medal in the women’s World Skateboarding Championship. She'll compete at the Paris games on Aug. 6.


When Minna Stess was younger, she watched Olympic swimming and gymnastics on television. Never did she imagine that the sport she loved most — skateboarding — could one day propel her to that level of elite competition.

Stess, a Petaluma native, couldn’t have foreseen that skateboarding would one day be featured in the world’s greatest games, or that she might be skating with the best of the best.

“I never thought skating would become an Olympic sport, so it’s kind of crazy to think about,” says Stess. “It’s so cool that I have the opportunity to get this close.”

Now 18, Stess has already achieved the amazing, if not the impossible. She is currently the No. 3 ranked female Park Skate competitor in the U.S., and No. 13 in the world. She’s also set to compete in the 2024 Olympics in Paris.

Mina Stess
Petaluma’s Minna Stess competes in the Rio Park and Street World Championships in Rio de Janeiro earlier in October 2022. (Photo by Bryce Kanights)

Stess’s Olympic event, Park Skate, takes place on a bowl-shaped course with sloping ramps, quarter pipes and bumps in a test of speed, momentum and aerial maneuvers. It differs from the other Olympic skateboarding event, Street Skate, in the type of obstacles. Both Park and Street skateboarding were added to the Olympic roster for the 2020 Tokyo games.

The Women’s Park Skate events at the Paris games are scheduled for Aug. 6. Judges score as individual skaters perform three 45-second runs, with each skater’s best score from all three runs used to determine the winners.

Stess began skateboarding while still in diapers and was winning major amateur competitions by the time she was 8 years old. The local prodigy first competed in the X Games at just 11 years old.

More recently, she made a name for herself as a world-class park skate competitor. In 2021, she won gold at the 2021 USA National Championships’ Women’s Park competition, putting her among the top two women in the U.S. for the event, and among the top 15 in the world.

Mina Stess
Petaluma skateboarder Mina Stess, 18, at a skateboarding competition in Dubai. (Bryce Kanights/Courtesy Andrew Stess)

Stess made her mark again by earning a bronze medal at the World Skateboarding Championship last October, becoming the first American ever to medal in the women’s event.

This past spring’s final Olympic qualifying stretch has been “nerve-racking.” Stess competed in the final pair of qualifier series competitions — in Shanghai May 16-19 and in Budapest June 20-23 — and ranked in each No. 16 and No. 13, respectively.

Shanghai “was a cool experience,” Stess says, “but it was definitely a lot.”

“These last two series have more points, so it’s a lot more pressure,” she explains. As of late June, Stess qualified for this summer’s Olympic Games.

Stess is one of at least three Olympians with ties to Sonoma County competing in the Paris games. Freestyle BMX rider Nikita Ducarroz was raised in Glen Ellen and competes for the Swiss national team. And Forestville’s Stephen Tomasin, a former collegiate All-American, is a member of the men’s national rugby sevens team.

minnastess.com