Halfbarz Makes History: Jack Ward Wins Scooter's First-Ever X Games

Scootering just got its moment on one of the biggest stages in action sports — and a CORE rider walked away with the win.

Jack Halfbarz Ward celebrating his Scooter Park Best Trick win at X Games New Orleans

At the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, Jack "Halfbarz" Ward took top spot in the Bluff Scooter Park Best Trick — the first scooter contest ever held at X Games. Thirty-plus years of X Games history, and the first name written into the scooter record books is ours.

The first scooter contest in X Games history

X Games ran the contest as part of a new "Spotlight Events" format at its 2026 League Championship — a way of putting emerging disciplines in front of a global broadcast audience and letting fans decide what earns a permanent place on the programme. Scooter Park Best Trick opened the weekend on Friday, with skateboard park best trick following the day after.

For a sport that has spent two decades building its own contests, its own media and its own culture largely outside the mainstream, getting a slot on the ABC and ESPN broadcast is not a small thing. The Superdome floor was rebuilt as a full skatepark, BMX course and moto track, with more than 80 athletes from 16 countries in town for the weekend. Scootering was in the room.

Jack Halfbarz Ward inverted mid-air on his scooter above a packed crowd at the Caesars Superdome

The trick that won it

Jack landed a backflip double front scooter flip — and the arena lost it.

If you don't speak scooter: that's a backflip with the deck spinning twice underneath him in the opposite direction, all reeled back in and caught in time to ride away. It's the kind of trick that only works if the rider has done the reps thousands of times, and it's exactly the sort of thing best trick formats are built for.

Behind him, Cody Flom of the USA took second with a frontflip flair tailwhip rewind kickless rewind, and Switzerland's Matis Neyroud rounded out the podium in third with a 360 frontflip. The level across the board was ridiculous. Nobody in that building could say scootering didn't belong there.

Speaking afterwards, Jack said he grew up watching the X Games with his brother — and that being there at all, let alone winning it, was hard to put into words. He thanked everyone who'd backed him along the way.

Jack Halfbarz Ward raising his arms in celebration after winning the X Games scooter contest

A win for Halfbarz, a win for scootering

Jack has been part of the CORE family for years, and watching him go from UK park sessions to standing on top of an X Games podium in front of a Superdome crowd is something the whole team here is proud of.

But this one's bigger than any single rider. Every scooter contest that gets broadcast, every kid at home who sees a scooter on ESPN and realises this is a real sport with real athletes, moves the needle.

And the fans made their feelings pretty clear. The whole point of the Spotlight Event format was to let the audience decide whether scootering earns a permanent place on the programme — and the vote came back north of 95% in favour of keeping it. That's not a narrow win. That's a mandate.

What that means in practice is opportunity: more contest slots, more reason for brands to invest in riders, more visibility for a sport that has spent twenty years building itself from the ground up. Riders like Jack have been putting in that work long before there was a Superdome floor to do it on. This is the sport getting the platform it's already earned.

Massive congratulations to Jack. History books, first name on the list. Not bad.

CORE scooter setup held up in front of the X Games skatepark course inside the Caesars Superdome