Our team rider Leiola Kahaku is competing at Worlds!
World Skate Games · Asunción 2026
Three days, three disciplines and a whole lot of cones. Here's every women's round in Pacific Time, where to stream it free, and why one of our own is a rider to watch.
Updated Monday, October 12, 2026
The 2026 Skateboarding Slalom World Championships are part of the World Skate Games Asunción 2026 (Oct 2–18). Slalom takes over Cerro Lambaré, a hilltop park about 25 minutes from downtown Asunción, from October 14–17. The road course is about 1 km long, with an average grade of 7.7% that pitches up to 23% at its steepest. There's one discipline a day: Giant Slalom Thursday, Hybrid Friday, Tight Saturday. Each winner takes home $2,000 from a $10,000 purse, split evenly between the women and the men.
West Coast fans, Paraguay is 4 hours ahead of California (UTC-3). Every women's medal round wraps up before 1:30 PM Pacific, so you can watch it on a long lunch break.
The schedule (Pacific Time)
As of Monday, Oct 12, nobody has raced yet. Wednesday is official training, and the medal racing runs Thursday through Saturday.
These times come from World Skate's official slalom schedule graphic, which is posted in Asunción time and converted here. Giant Slalom is three timed runs, and the schedule doesn't list separate women's and men's sessions. In Hybrid and Tight, everyone races qualifying runs first, but the official schedule doesn't publish a time for qualifying. The first time it gives is the women's round of 16, and the men's round of 16 follows at 10:00 AM PT. Times can shift with weather. World Skate says Hybrid gets priority if anything has to move.
Where to watch in California
WorldSkate.TV streams all three days free on World Skate's own site (USA Slalom Skateboarding says it's free to view). There's one stream page for the whole event:
- Giant Slalom: Thu Oct 15, from 6:00 AM PT ›
- Hybrid Slalom: Fri Oct 16, from 9:15 AM PT ›
- Tight Slalom: Sat Oct 17, from 9:15 AM PT ›
YouTube? As of Monday night, World Skate hasn't posted a slalom livestream on YouTube. The World Skate Skateboarding channel that carried park doesn't list one. The downhill races on the same hill streamed on World Skate's main channel, though, so it's worth checking youtube.com/@WorldSkate/streams on race morning.
Meet Leiola Kahaku (USA)
She's one of our own! Leiola rides for the Girl Is NOT A 4 Letter Word team, and she's heading to Paraguay as the reigning women's overall world champion.
- Hometown: Campbell, California (San Jose area)
- Age: 18, per her website
- Stance: Regular
- Instagram: @leiolask8
How she got here. Leiola got her first skateboard from her uncles one Christmas when she was 7. She skated parks with them on weekends, and during the pandemic she pretty much lived at the skatepark. She's still a bowl skater at heart (she loves a loud frontside grind on pool coping). In September 2023, a friend from the Newark skate session invited her to a slalom practice to run cones, and she was hooked. That's also where she met her mentor, Skateboarding Hall of Famer and world champion Judi Oyama. Leiola raced her first 25-cone race in January 2024. Two months later she made the USA Slalom team at the Texas Sizzler, which put her in the World Skate Games 2024 in Italy.
Results and titles.
- 2025 Women's Overall World Slalom Champion in São Paulo, Brazil (Nov 2025). She won Giant and Hybrid and took 3rd in Tight.
- 100-cone world record, junior women: 27.582 seconds, set in December 2025. That's 13.6 seconds faster than the record from 2011, and the International Slalom Skateboarding Association (ISSA) has verified it.
- 2025 USA Slalom Skateboarding "Skater of the Year"
- 2nd overall, Pro Women at the 2025 US Slalom National Championships in Broomfield, Colorado
- USA junior national slalom champion
- She finished 2025 ranked 3rd in the world and is on World Skate's official pre-seeded list for Asunción.
Sponsors and teams. She rides for Girl Is NOT A 4 Letter Word, Sk8Kings, the NorCal Slalom Skateboard Racing Team, La Costa Racing Team and N-Men Racing. Her sponsors are S1 Helmets, Santa Cruz Boardroom, Ace Trucks, Ferrell Speed Racing, Switch Skate Supply, Badass Skatemom, Snowtime Desserts, Aloha Fresh Poke, Kaiolohia Consulting and Puahina Hawaiʻi. In 2025 she also won Lume Six's Support Women Athletes grant.
Off the board, she makes stop-motion skate animations with tiny clay figures and mini bowls, and she builds art from recycled materials. She skates to old punk (Ramones, Joan Jett, the Descendents), and her favorite food is Hawaiian (laulau, poi, kalua pork). As for racing at 30 to 35 mph? "It feels sort of mellow," she told the Mercury News, "like medium speed."
What to watch for: Leiola won Giant and Hybrid at last year's Worlds, so Thursday and Friday are her title defenses. Tight Slalom, the most technical discipline, is the one where she has the most room to climb. Her Instagram bio says it plainly: she's in Paraguay "to race in Giant, Hybrid and Tight Slalom!"
Slalom in 60 seconds
Racers launch off a start ramp, weave through a course of cones and race the electronic clock. Each knocked cone adds a time penalty, and knocking too many can mean disqualification. The three disciplines add up to an overall world title.
- Giant Slalom (GS), Thursday: This is the fast one. Racers go one at a time down a single lane with wide cone spacing, at the highest speeds of the week. Everyone gets three timed runs, and the results come from those times.
- Hybrid Slalom (HS), Friday: Two racers go head-to-head in side-by-side lanes. The cone spacing keeps changing, so racers have to switch rhythm mid-run. After qualifying, it's a knockout bracket. Hybrid is also the tie-breaker for the overall title.
- Tight Slalom (TS), Saturday: This is also dual-lane and head-to-head, but the cones are packed close together. It's the most technical discipline and all about quick feet and precise pumping. Qualifying comes first, then a knockout bracket.
Other riders to watch
- Lynn Kramer (USA). She tops World Skate's pre-seeded women's list and was ISSA's No. 1 woman for the 2024 season.
- Dominika Ozolina (Latvia) and Karolina Vojtova (Czechia) finished 2nd and 3rd in ISSA's 2024 women's season ranking.
- The young Czech crew: Emily Martinu, Anna Rezkova and Tereza Dvorakova were 1-2-3 among junior girls in 2024, and all three are already ranked in the women's top 6.
- More of Team USA: Jennifer Coppa, Sarah Byrd and Francesca Rosario Custodio are all pre-seeded.
- Also pre-seeded: Endija Ruja (Latvia), Kathrin Sehl (Germany) and Marina Nobrega (Brazil).
This list comes from World Skate's pre-qualified athletes in Bulletin #01. The final start list hasn't been published yet, so check who's actually in the heats.
Set your alarms
If you can only catch one session, pick Friday, Oct 16 at 12:45 PM PT. That's the Hybrid finals, where Leiola is defending her title and the overall race can swing. Saturday's Tight Slalom finals are at the same time, 12:45 PM PT. Early birds can catch Giant Slalom Run 1 at 6:00 AM PT Thursday. Results will be posted on the official WSG ASU26 results page.
Sources: World Skate's official slalom schedule graphic (Sept 29, 2026, Asunción time), Slalom Bulletin #01 (venue, format, pre-qualified athletes) and Bulletin #02 (prize money), the World Skate event page, the WorldSkate.TV stream page and the WSG ASU26 site. Leiola's bio comes from leiolakahaku.com, USA Slalom Skateboarding, the Mercury News (Sept 2025, June 2026) and her Girl Is NOT A 4 Letter Word team page. Rankings are from ISSA's SlalomRanking. Times were checked on Oct 12, 2026, and schedules can shift, so check the stream page before you tune in.
