Tokyo 2020
Yuto's late tricks do the trick
Japanese slips early but recovers to win new sport's first gold as favourite stumbles
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Japan's Yuto Horigome sliding down the stair handrails in the men's skateboarding street preliminaries at Ariake Urban Sports Park yesterday. He performed superbly in the tricks after his disappointing runs and scored a total of 37.18 to win the gold, with Brazilian Kelvin Hoefler and American Jagger Eaton taking silver and bronze respectively.
PHOTO: REUTERS
TOKYO • Skateboarding's entry into the Olympics evolved into a tense, can-you-top-this exhibition in the men's street competition, as one world-class skateboarder after another did nuanced variations of tricks off the park's biggest feature, a 12-stair drop with three different rails.
It was an all-or-nothing venture. Falls got zero points. Stuck landings earned scores to keep.
Each trick ended either on the concrete in despair or on the skateboard in some shades of relief and elation.
That is where Japan's Yuto Horigome, the son of a Tokyo taxi driver, came back from a shaky start with back-to-back tricks that shot him to the gold medal, just 13km from where he grew up.
His feat gave Japan the first-ever Olympic gold in the sport.
It is where Nyjah Huston of the United States, the gold-medal favourite and the biggest name in competitive skateboarding, fell four times in a row, ending his hopes of adding an Olympic medal to his overstuffed trophy room.
It is where the two friendly rivals embraced at the end, in the heat of the searing midday sun at the Ariake Urban Sports Park.
Horigome finished with scores of 9.35, 9.50 and 9.30 for a total of 37.18.
While Huston's inability to win a medal was a surprise, it left room for Jagger Eaton (35.35), his fellow American, to grab the bronze, behind Kelvin Hoefler (36.15) of Brazil.
After his win, Horigome told Japanese broadcaster NHK the Games were a culmination of years of work.
"I know it's simple but I'm really happy," he said, describing how he gave the final tricks everything after his disappointing runs.
"I was stressing out inside, but I was able to turn it around with my best tricks."
Each athlete performed two timed runs through the skate park, hustling for 45 seconds on their own path through a vast course of ramps, stairs and rails. They then took turns trying five tricks of their choosing.
A panel of judges scored each run and trick - seven scores in all - on a 10-point scale. The best four scores were added up.
Nerves seemed to jangle several top competitors at the start of the final, and clean runs were hard to find. Huston admitted to feeling the pressure but said that landing technical tricks was a risky business.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I know I definitely let some people down, and I have no problem admitting that. But I'm human, you know."
Olympic competition crowns a long journey for the counter-culture pursuit, which emerged as "sidewalk surfing" - an alternative to surfing - in California in the 1950s.
After decades of organic growth, skateboarding was included in the inaugural X-Games, created by broadcaster ESPN, in 1995, paving the way for an increasingly slick and organised sport.
The final was a global affair, with eight skaters from six countries. Huston, who lives in Laguna Beach, California, and Eaton, from Mesa, Arizona, represented the United States. France also had two finalists, Vincent Milou and Aurelien Giraud, who had the best score in the preliminary heats.
The women's street skaters will compete today, and men's and women's park will be contested next week.
NYTIMES, REUTERS AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
