Skateboarding
Skateboarding
Meet Jagger Eaton, a man on a mission
The current Skateboard Park World Champion has already won X Games gold, but as one of his generation's most undeniably consistent and progressive skaters, Eaton has cards yet to play.
In a sense, you could say that Jagger Eaton was raised around skateboarding. The Arizona native started skating aged four and, by 2012, set a record for being the youngest ever X Games competitor to date, aged just 11. Skating every day allowed Eaton to hone an overall skateboarding ability rarely seen in any generation – one equally as comfortable handling the massive transitions and hang time of Big Air contests as taking on the street terrain of Arizona and beyond.
01
Product of his environment
In contrast to a skateboarding orthodoxy, which holds that street skating is the true bedrock of the activity (one of those received wisdom morsels that is demonstrably not true, skateboarding existed for decades before Gonz and Natas came along), Eaton was unapologetically raised around manufactured skate terrain. In truth, most of today’s era of skateboarders are, they're just less prepared to admit it.
Jagger Eaton
© Red Bull
Having eight broken bones before I was 13...my mom had to deal with that
With a mini-ramp jammed into their garage space, Eaton and his siblings learned the rudiments of instinctive balance, which have made him the multi-discipline master he is today. Eaton’s parents would later expand their gymnastic space into KTR skatepark, where Eaton hones his craft until this very day. However, the learning curve was not without its pitfalls: “Having eight broken bones before I was 13...my mom had to deal with that.”
Jagger Eaton – Switch Backside Flip
© Chaz Miley/Red Bull Content Pool
That’s when I realised I wanted to skate for the rest of my life
“That’s when I realised I wanted to skate for the rest of my life," he says. "I started getting good and I was having so much fun. My dad showed me everything about skateboarding,” he recalls. “I loved it from the very beginning.”
02
The run begins
In 2014, Eaton won the pivotal Tampa Am contest, and his career took off in earnest: he signed a TV deal with America-wide broadcaster Nickelodeon, and the rest is a history which is still being written. Of the TV experience, Jagger remembers: "It was really cool, and I had a great time doing it. It’s all love to Nickelodeon. People bring it up all the time and you can still buy both seasons on Apple TV! It was a really cool time in my life and I hope I changed some lives through it."
Coming off the back of coast-to-coast TV exposure, Jagger next won the much-coveted Phoenix Am title as well as an X Games gold medal back-to-back in the summer of 2017.
4 min
All Roads Lead To Tampa Am
Video highlights from Tampa Am 2014 right here!
“The one that I take most pride in, and the one that made me the happiest, was winning Tampa Am. A lot of people will say that winning Tampa Pro is way easier than winning Tampa Am. They’re exactly right. That’s spot on. Winning Tampa Am, and competing in Tampa Am, was one of the scariest moments of my life.”
Jagger Eaton – kickflip backside lipslide
© Andrew Durso
A lot of people will say that winning Tampa Pro is way easier than winning Tampa Am. They're exactly right
03
The gear change
In 2018 he won Estonia’s Simple Session, an X Games silver, came third at Vans Park Series in Huntington and finally achieved an unprecedented Tampa Pro win – despite not having a pro board out at the time.
2 min
Simple Session 2018 Highlights
Watch every hammer worthy of the name as Estonia’s annual ding-dong crowns a new boss.
With his professional status cemented thanks to a storming debut section for The Heart Supply in 2020 and the capability to cause an upset on any terrain, Eaton’s inclusion in Team USA for Tokyo 2020 proved to be a strategic masterstroke, as he secured a bronze medal in Street.
Jagger Eaton – Switch Back Lip
© Luis Gallo
04
Becoming world champion
However, Eaton is such a versatile skateboarder that he was the only skateboarder to enter both Street and Park at the 2022 World Championships. This fact speaks to an unbelievable level of all-around skateboarding talent. Despite being unlucky in Street at the 2022 World Championships, he won in Park against a field of specialists. He kept his options open into 2023 by entering both the World Skateboarding Tour Park stop in Argentina and the Street stop in Italy a little over a month later – making the finals in both.
Arguably the most consistent skater in the world today and always bringing new tricks forward, Eaton always presents the threat of the unknown to his competitors and, as such, can never be discounted by his opposition regardless of which discipline he chooses to compete in.
The skatepark dreamer from Arizona currently lies in first position in the Official World Skate Rankings for Park and also in ninth place for Street.
Either way, Paris beckons.
Check out Jagger Eaton's playlist below, or head over to Spotify to hear it there:
