San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Skateboarding rolls to sports mainstream
TOKYO — Skateboarding is not a crime.
To the contrary, skateboarding is an Olympic sport.
Skaters’ most famous rallying cry was upended when the sport hit the mainstream Sunday morning in Japan, with the first Olympic skateboarding event in history. The men’s street final, in which rails and ramps were emblazoned with the traditional fivering emblem, was void of any criminal or renegade element save for the lack of helmets — which made parents around the world cringe.
The expected gold medalist, Davis native Nyjah Huston, finished out of medal contention, falling on his final four tricks. The star of the day was 22yearold Yuto Horigome, who was born not far from the Ariake Urban Sports Park and now lives in Los Angeles.
Horigome, who looked dejected and feeling the pressure in his runs, took gold with a series of tricks. Brazil’s Kelvin Hoefler won silver and 20yearold Jagger Eaton from Mesa, Ariz., won the bronze.
The sport that has launched a
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million citations for public nuisance is now reaching for traditional emblems of athletic achievement.
Faster, higher, stronger. Gnarlier?
“I’m surprised it took this long for them to figure it out,” said the world’s most famous skateboarder, Tony Hawk, who at 53 will have missed his chance to go for Olympic gold. But he’s in Japan working for NBC and tried out the Olympic venue over the weekend and called it “surreal.”
“I believe they needed a youthful energy to the summer Games,” Hawk said in his media briefing. “It’s overdue.”
Of course, not everyone is thrilled about this evolution of a renegade sport, long prized for its counterculture vibe, individual artistry and lack of rules. As Thrasher magazine, the bible of the sport headquartered in San Francisco, wrote when it was announced that skateboarding would be part of the Olympic program, “Like many skaters, we have mixed feelings about skateboarding appearing in the next Olympics. And by mixed feelings we mean disgust combined with a headache.”
But the Olympics continue to attempt to get younger and hipper and appeal to a demographic that isn’t wowed by modern pentathlon or archery.
This isn’t the first time that Japan has been the launching pad for a hip and edgy sports. Back in 1998, skateboarding’s predecessor, snowboarding, made its debut in Nagano. That was a far more radical moment, as the X Games were only a few years old and the young, cheeky athletes swooping through tricks and competing to blasting rock music felt way more novel. When Ross Rebagliati won gold in snowboarding giant’s slalom, he promptly tested positive for THC, which he claimed was from secondhand exposure. Skepticism about his excuse led to this famous defense from one of his teammates: “Dude, he lives in Whistler.”
Fast forward 23 years and Japan again is the site of a radical debut, one that seemed inevitable as the X Games and the Dew Tour became mainstream. Marijuana is mainstream in so many places that it wasn’t a skateboarder who got busted but a sprinter — Sha’Carri Richardson — who uses pot regularly and seemed unaware it would upend her Olympic dreams. No skateboarders have made headlines here for weed or breaking COVID rules or any other misbehavior.
Goofyfooted Horigome is the sport’s new star, and he upstaged his rival Huston, a multimillionaire whose trademark is consistency and fluidity. But in trying to rally from a poor first run, Huston went for huge tricks and failed.
Though the 26yearold is wildly popular, with 4.7 million Instagram followers, Huston is considered too successful and too corporate for the taste of many skaters.
Maybe by crashing out of Olympic medal contention, he just regained some of his street cred.