Keegan PALMER

Australia

Skateboarding

Olympic Medals

Games Participations2

First Olympic GamesTokyo 2020

Year of Birth2003

Social Media

Biography

Everything Keegan Palmer touches seems to turn into gold.

At the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Keegan won the gold medal in the inaugural men’s skateboarding competition. He followed that up with a successful defence of his title at the Paris 2024 Olympics to remain the only person to achieve this feat in the skateboarding park events.

Keegan Palmer was born on March 12, 2003, in San Diego, USA to father Chris and mother Cindy but moved to Gold Coast, Australia a year later. He began skating at his local park when he was just two years old and took to the sport naturally.

Palmer took up surfing at an early age before switching his focus to skateboarding. His start in skating came after his father discovered his ability to balance while out surfing on a foam board at a young age. Soon after that, he was on the famous Elanora Skate Park on Australia’s Gold Coast.

Palmer was only 14 when he won the Bondi Bowl-A-Rama in Sydney, becoming the youngest competitor to ever win the pro division at this event. In the same year, he conquered the 2017 Tour Am Bowl competition.

By the end of 2017, aged 14, Palmer decided to join the professional circuit and in 2018, he made his Pro Tour debut where he finished seventh in the final. Palmer secured his first Tour podium finish just a year later when he clinched the third place.

He quickly established himself as the best in the country after winning the 2020 Australian National Championships and qualified for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics a year later.

At Tokyo 2020, he qualified fifth for the medal round but produced two spectacular runs to finish with the two highest-scoring runs of the final.

His first run got him a score of 94.04 from the judges while his final run got 95.83 as he became the first men’s park skateboarding Olympic champion, finishing ahead of Pedro Barros of Brazil and Cory Juneau of the USA.

Palmer’s gold medal-winning performance in Tokyo saw him perform the kickflip body varial 540, making it the first time the trick was implemented in a major park competition.

In 2022, he was conferred the Medal of the Order of Australia.

Success has continued to follow Palmer following his triumph at Tokyo 2020. He won gold at the Summer X Games in Chiba, Japan in 2023 and clinched another X Games gold medal in Ventura, California in 2024.

Keegan Palmer secured a quota for the Paris 2024 Olympics by winning the Olympic qualification series event in Budapest in June 2024 with a successful run of 94.04.

He successfully defended his men’s park skateboarding Olympic title in Paris after recording a score of 93.11 in his first run. He finished ahead of Tom Schaar (92.23) of the USA and Brazilian Augusto Akio (91.85).

Along with Japan’s Yuto Horigome, who also defended his title in the men’s street event at Paris 2024, Keegan Palmer is the only person to have won two Olympic gold medals in skateboarding.

In 2017, he decided to move to the U.S. for access to more training facilities because the parks are better. Palmer holds dual citizenship but his heart remains with Australia.

"The reason that I wanted to represent Australia in the Olympics was I'd pretty much learned how to do everything in Australia,” Palmer reasoned. “I learned how to skate, how to surf, I went to school in Australia - literally everything that I've grown up to do has been in Australia - especially skateboarding. It was meant to be and right to do it there, nowhere else."