For This 18-Year-Old Skater, the Paris Olympics Are Just the Beginning

From the street, Minna Stess’ Petaluma home fits right in with the other houses on the block. Sitting in her backyard on a sunny Monday afternoon, dressed in a black T-shirt and shorts, purple socks and Vans, the 18-year-old looks like almost any other suburban skate kid.

There’s just one difference: Stess is about to fly to Paris to compete in the 2024 Olympics.

In Paris, Stess will represent the United States in skateboarding, which became an Olympic sport just four years ago. To vie for the gold on the U.S. women’s team on a relatively new Olympic field, and on a global stage no less, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

And yet when I meet with her, 24 hours before she gets on an airplane for the biggest competition of her young career, Stess remains easygoing and calm. Nonchalant, even. After all, she says, no matter how hard she tries, she can’t remember a time when she didn’t skate.

Turning Pro at 11

Stess’ backyard is no ordinary backyard. The majority of it is taken up by a custom-built mini-skatepark, built in 2012. Back then, its three-foot transitions were plenty high for six-year-old Stess. Wanting to copy her older brother Finnley, she’d gotten into skating four years earlier, around age 2.

Sitting on a bench seat on the backyard deck, Stess tells me her parents had a wooden ramp put in before the concrete park, but they got tired of throwing tarps over it every time it rained. The family celebrated the new concrete park’s completion by stepping their feet into the wet concrete before it dried. You can still see Stess’ tiny, classic Vans imprint.

Having her own backyard park was an asset in a city that didn’t have many skateparks while Stess was growing up. She skated the ramps at the Phoenix Theater, a downtown music venue and teen hangout, and got involved with skate contests put on by the California Amateur Skateboard League, even though they required long car rides.

An admirer of Brazilian-American skater Bob Burnquist and his skating style, Stess entered more amateur contests, winning her first by the time she turned eight. She turned pro around age 11, and soon started making appearances at some of the biggest contests around: the Dew Tour, the X Games and the USA National Championships. Along the way, she found herself drawn to park skating, a discipline which combines multiple styles like bowl, street and vert.

“I like airing out of things and flying high,” Stess says. “Park is definitely my favorite. I prefer it to literally everything.”

Kickflipping Her Way to the Olympics

Her career continued to take flight, too, as Stess was chosen for the USA Skateboarding Women’s Park National Team in 2019. In 2021, she won the USA National Championships’ Women’s Park competition, becoming its youngest champion at age 15. And though she didn’t get to compete, Stess was named as an alternate for Team USA in the 2021 Olympic games.

Stess’ path to the Olympics has been one filled with epic highs and lows. One of the lows came in May, when she entered an Olympic qualifier in Shanghai, China, and fell during all three of her runs. It was something she’d never done before, she tells me.

“I was like, ‘Okay, I can’t do that again,’” says Stess. “I kind of like, cracked under pressure, I guess.”

Her final Olympic Qualifier Series contest was held last month in Budapest, Hungary, and it quickly became just as nerve-wracking as her experience in Shanghai. She fell during her first two runs, and was feeling the pressure with just one run left. “I couldn’t watch anyone skate. I was like, pacing in circles,” reflecting back on her runs, she says. She had the support of the crowd and her competitors, though, who cheered loudly for her right before that fateful final run.

“Even the Brazilians were hyped,” she says. “And if the Brazilians are cheering for you, you know you did something right.”

She made it through her final run without falling, and even though her score wasn’t as high as she’d hoped, it was enough. Stess had punched her ticket to Paris.

A Family Affair

For the duration of the Games, Stess will stay at the Olympic Village, sharing a room with a member of the street skating team. Her family will be close by in case she needs an escape; her parents, thinking ahead, booked a four-bedroom Paris home eight months ago for themselves, Stess’ brother, her uncle, her aunt and even her 87-year-old grandma.

“We never plan this far ahead for anything,” says her mother, Moniz Stess. Due to skateboarding’s very on-the-fly nature, she explains, it’s hard to plan lodging and plane tickets in advance. They waited to book their plane tickets until Stess knew whether or not she was Olympics-bound, but they still booked the house, just in case.

It was a hunch that paid off, and Stess’ parents couldn’t be more proud.

“I drive Minna crazy using the word ‘journey,’ but it has been just that,” says her father, Andrew Stess. “It–” his voice breaks a little. “I can’t talk about it without getting teary-eyed. You see your kid loves something, and you want to–”

Just then, his face suddenly softens as he spots Stess, who’s been half-tuned in from the other side of the skatepark. “She’s laughing at me,” he smiles.

Staying ‘In the Moment’

Stess’ family has always been extremely supportive of her career, and have managed to find routine amidst the hectic nature of pro contest skating. “People probably thought we were nuts with, you know, us hopping in the car on weekends and driving the kids wherever, to go to whatever contest,” says Moniz. “But skateboarding for us is just normal.”

Stess, too, has learned to balance staying competitive while also avoiding burnout. “I’m lucky, because I live in Petaluma, and most of the skating stuff is down in Southern California,” she says. “It’s kind of like going back and forth between two worlds.” Her friends, too, are a big source of support. Some are skaters like her, others don’t skate at all. “Being with them is kind of like a refresher,” she says.

With the days counting down to her Olympic preliminary contest, the skater feels confident both mentally and physically. “I definitely feel better than I did when I got back from Budapest,” she says. “I’m excited to go.” As for how she processes all the emotions that come from being a pro athlete on the world stage, “I try not to think of the consequences of things and just like, be in the moment,” she tells me. “You want to land your run, but sometimes you gotta realize like, not everything’s going to go right.”

I ask if she’s prepared her runs yet, but she knows anything she plans on paper will likely have to be tweaked once she gets a feel for the park firsthand. For now, she’s looking forward to watching the street skaters practice and doing a bit of Olympic pin trading.

She has one other hope, too. Her Olympic Village roommate had to buy blinds for their dorm, and they apparently keep falling down.

“So I hope they stay up,” Stess says, “so I can get a good night’s sleep.”

Minna Stess competes in the Olympic Skateboarding Women’s Park Preliminaries on Tuesday, Aug. 6. The event will be broadcast at 3:30 Pacific Time. The Women’s Final airs at 8:30 a.m.