Red Bull LEDGEnds Houston: He Topped Qualifiers Out of 41 Skaters, Then Lost the Final in 12 Minutes

On August 8, 2026, Southside Skate Park in South Houston closed its doors to the public to host the Texas stop of Red Bull LEDGEnds: an invite-only, ledges-only contest, jam format. Forty-one skaters in the morning, five in the afternoon final, a $2,000 purse. The guy who came out of qualifiers in first didn’t win. And it’s not a fluke — it’s written into the rulebook. Podium, payouts, awards, then the breakdown.

The Podium: Damien Olivo Pockets the $500

Damien Olivo, 28, out of San Antonio, takes the Red Bull LEDGEnds Houston. Behind him, Jared Smith (Lawrence, Kansas) locks up 2nd and Jojo Williamson 3rd. Olivo was the youngest of the five finalists. The five split $1,200 of the $2,000 total purse.

• 1. Damien OlivoWinner

  28 · San Antonio, TX · $500 · Global Ranking 2,042

• 2. Jared SmithTop qualifier

  32 · Lawrence, KS · $300 · Global Ranking 1,609

• 3. Jojo Williamson3rd

  35 · $200 · Global Ranking 3,013

• 4. Deonte Bouchard4th

  31 · $100 · Global Ranking 4,396

• 5. Wes WallaceThe vet

  37 · Austin, TX · $100 · Global Ranking 3,941

Three $200 special awards dropped on top of the podium. The Tiago Pop Award — a nod to Tiago Lemos, the guy who redefined what you can get up onto a ledge — went to Jared Smith. The Local Legend Award went to Dakota Roberson, out of Houston. The Hell Yeah Award went to Martin “HollyWood” Martinez, also from Houston, who came out of qualifiers in 7th. Official finals results on The Boardr.

41 Skaters in the Morning, 5 Spots: The Cut Came Down to Your First Fall

Check-in at 11 a.m., contest at 1 p.m. The 41 entrants ran through five-man jams, ten minutes per jam, taking turns — and you skate until you fall. One slam and you hand it off to the next guy. That system doesn’t reward the one-off banger: it pays clean skating and stamina. You know the type — the dude who never falls and, by the end of the jam, has logged twice as much board time as you.

Jared Smith topped those qualifiers, ahead of Damien Olivo (2nd), Wes Wallace (3rd), Deonte Bouchard (4th) and Jojo Williamson (5th). Below them, the list reads like a deep Texas scene: Jamie Sedo 6th, Martin Martinez 7th, Zac Votruba 8th, Tate Malpass 9th. Forty-one names, five tickets. The full qualifier standings are public.

Southside Skate Park: A Warehouse, Not a Stadium

The address is 510 Iowa Street, South Houston. An indoor park under a steel-frame roof, concrete and plywood, quarters along the sides and a center obstacle sitting in the middle of the slab. Nothing spectacular in photos. It’s exactly the kind of place skateboarding has always lived: no grandstand, no jumbotron, the garage door open onto the grass with that hot Texas air rolling in. Honestly, all the better.

What was really on the line that day goes way beyond the $500. An invite-only contest at a neighborhood park is a local pecking order getting settled in front of the people who know it best. Two of the three special awards went to Houston skaters. When your name gets called in the warehouse you’ve been skating for ten years, no global ranking comes close.

The Jam Format: 12 Minutes, No Runs, No Scores Out of 100

The final is a single twelve-minute jam with all five skaters. No timed runs, no best trick, no score out of 100 flashing on a screen. Judges score overall impression and look at four things: commitment and difficulty, creativity and use of the whole obstacle, lines — with an explicit emphasis on distance covered in slides and grinds — then speed, style, flow and power. The judging criteria are published on the event page.

Twelve minutes, five deep, on ledges, in August, inside a Texas warehouse: you circle, you wait your turn, you go again. The noise never stops, trucks cracking nonstop, and around the ten-minute mark the legs start talking. The awards were handed out right after, no ceremony.

Denver, Then Houston: Where the LEDGEnds Series Stands

Houston is the second stop of the circuit spotted this summer. A week earlier, on August 1, the Denver LEDGEnds went to Keanan Hinton, 22, ahead of Julian Christianson and Alex Gould. Same purse, same format. The full podium is linked further down.

There’s no cumulative overall standings published across stops: each LEDGEnds lives on its own, with its local invites and its own purse. What it does feed, though, is The Boardr’s Global Ranking — 500 points for qualifiers, 1,000 for the final. And on that front, Olivo leaves Houston with something real. Next to an SLS Rio or a Tampa Pro field, it’s a different world: no global stream, no judges in button-ups, a neighborhood park and a $500 check.

Why the Top Qualifier Lost the Final

Straight answer: because nothing Jared Smith did in the morning still counted in the afternoon. Qualifiers don’t carry points into the final — they hand you a spot, and that’s it. The board resets to zero with five names on it.

More to the point, the two rounds don’t measure the same thing. In the morning, the rule is mechanical: you skate until you fall. The guy who doesn’t fall banks board time, which means tricks, which means ranking. It’s a consistency game, and Smith locked it down in front of 40 others. In the afternoon, that rule disappears: twelve open minutes, scored on overall impression, with criteria that explicitly pay for how far you hold a slide or a grind. In other words, the morning round rewards the guy who never slams; the afternoon rewards the guy who takes the grind the farthest. That’s not the same skater.

Damien Olivo, 28, the youngest of the final five — up against finalists aged 31, 32, 35 and 37 — held up better over those twelve minutes. In a session that long, fresh legs are not a footnote. Honest disclaimer: The Boardr published neither numeric scores nor official video of the Houston final, so nobody can walk you through the deciding trick in slow motion. What’s public are the standings, the payouts and the rulebook — and the rulebook is enough to explain the upset.

Which leaves the least ridiculous consolation prize of the weekend: Smith still walks away with the Tiago Pop Award and its $200 — $500 total with his 2nd place. Same as the winner.

A 12-minute jam or timed runs: which format gives you the best skating to watch? Drop it in the comments ↓

If you want to follow the rest of the contest circuit, we’re covering the stops one by one in the Events section of nosk8.com.

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