Brighton Zeuner, X Games gold at 13: what does she owe Jeff Grosso's ramp?

July 15, 2017, Minneapolis: Brighton Zeuner wins park gold at the X Games. She is 13 years and one day old. Nobody had ever won younger in the history of the event, and Guinness logs it right away. But the real start of that run happened four years earlier, in a backyard in Encinitas, on a ramp built under the eye of Jeff Grosso.

A kid born in 2004 and an 80s vert pro. What does one really owe the other? We followed the trail, source by source. The answer is sharper than a simple "he inspired her".

January 2025, Vans Pool Party: she still drops in

Eight years after Minneapolis, Brighton is still here. In January 2025 she finished 8th out of 16 at the Vans Pool Party, according to The Boardr. In between: a second X Games gold in 2018, two Vans Park Series world titles, and the Tokyo Games in 2021, where she placed 12th in park, the day Sky Brown made the podium at 13.

What hits you when you watch her isn’t the résumé. It’s the height. She flies out of the coping like someone who learned on something bigger than what she skates now. And that’s exactly what happened.

Jeff Grosso: on Vans at 14, the vert of the 80s

To get it, you have to rewind. Jeff Grosso steps on a board at 5, in Arcadia, California. In 1982 he’s 14 and Vans sponsors him. Two years later he joins Santa Cruz. He grows up in sessions with Neil Blender and Lance Mountain and becomes one of the best-known faces of 80s American vert. You can see him in Future Primitive - 1985 and in Streets on Fire, the Santa Cruz video.

Then his career falls apart in the early 90s. He comes back in 2005, joins Anti Hero in 2011 and launches Love Letters to Skateboarding with Vans, a YouTube show where he tells skate history to people who didn’t live it. A historian without a diploma, who called skate shops "Jedi temples".

Encinitas, 2013: the ramp in the backyard

In 2013 the Zeuners leave Phoenix and move full time to Encinitas, north of San Diego. Brighton is 9, her brother Jack is 10. They want a big ramp. The parents build it in the backyard, guided by two pros: Pierre-Luc Gagnon and Jeff Grosso. The model they pick is an "80s-style" vert ramp, says her Wikipedia page. ESPN describes it in 2016: 10.5 by 40 feet, right next to the pool.

Picture it. Not a kiddie mini ramp. A wooden wall over ten feet tall at the back of the yard, where the old guard shows up at night with their pads. Trucks grinding the coping, the "yeah!" when someone holds a line, and a 9-year-old girl waiting for her turn on the deck.

The timeline

ESPN, 2016: what Grosso says about her

The link isn’t a forum legend. It’s on record. In May 2016, ESPN follows Brighton before her first X Games, at 11. The piece quotes Grosso, 48, introduced as a veteran "who skates with Zeuner". His line: "She’s a 4-foot-8 powerhouse. She makes it look easy." (ESPN)

The same article lists who comes through the backyard ramp: Grosso, Darren Navarrette, Lance Mountain, Christian Hosoi, Chris Russell, Ben Raybourn. Brighton "studies their tricks and creates her own". They give her tips, they push her. Navarrette sums it up: she pushes them too, because she pushes herself.

And in January 2018, when the ramp lives its last night, Thrasher films it. In the credits: Tony Hawk, Hosoi, Navarrette, Lizzie Armanto, Keegan Palmer. And Jeff Grosso.

The invert, two months of fear: what she kept

In 2016, Brighton tells Rolling Stone which trick took her the longest: the invert. Two months. "Mentally scary." One hand on the coping, body upside down. It’s the handplant family, a trick Grosso gave a whole Love Letters episode to.

What she changed is everything else. Contests aren’t on vert anymore but in park, all concrete curves. Her role models move too: her mom names Cara-Beth Burnside, Nora Vasconcellos, Lizzie Armanto. In 2018 she tells Highsnobiety she watches "all the New York guys", Aidan Mackey, Ben Kadow, and paints her Vans every color. Today she rides for Frog, a New York street brand.

No Grosso in 2013, no gold in 2017?

Here’s the answer. What the 2017 gold owes the 80s is a full school, right outside her window. First a terrain: an old-school vert ramp, steeper than any contest park. When you learn at 9 on a ten-foot wall, a contest bowl feels friendly. Then teachers: Grosso, Mountain, Hosoi, Navarrette, dropping by at night, throwing their tricks in front of her and pushing her. And a culture: the session where everyone goes for it, where people yell to hype each other up, where a kid skates with guys in their forties and nobody finds it weird.

The talent, the fear she beat, the work: that’s her. But direct access to the Bones Brigade and Santa Cruz generation, at an age when you learn everything by copying, is what Grosso made possible. That’s our reading: neither of them ever said "without him, nothing". The facts say the ramp, the sessions, the quote.

Grosso left us on March 31, 2020, at 51. The Skateboarding Hall of Fame inducted him in 2023. His show was about handing skate history down to the kids. With Brighton he did it for real, no camera, on a backyard ramp. No Grosso in 2013, maybe no gold in 2017. No 80s vert, definitely not this Brighton.

Next time a 13-year-old girl wins a big contest, look at where she learned. There’s usually an old-timer nearby.