Japan’s Yuto Horigome wins first ever Olympic gold medal in skateboarding | Tokyo Olympic Games 2020 | The Guardian — theguardian.com

Nyjah Huston first got inked aged 18. The tattoo was three words, “Skate and destroy”, which is a fair summary of a competitive skateboarding career that began when he turned pro aged 11.The titles and the tattoos kept coming. Now 26, the sport’s biggest star seemed poised to crown his trophy collection with an inaugural Olympic gold, but a series of falls as he attempted challenging tricks in the Ariake Urban Sports Park sweatbox saw him finish seventh: one of the worst results of his career on the highest-profile stage.There was, instead, local delight as Yuto Horigome, an unassuming, Tokyo-born 22-year-old, took the men’s street title on home concrete ahead of the Brazilian, Kelvin Hoefler. An American, Arizona-born Jagger Eaton, 20, claimed bronze.In a sport where everyone slips, Huston is about as solid as it gets. But the Olympics are new and they are different. “I’ve never felt so much pressure from, like, representing your country,” he said afterwards.“Little bummed with myself, obviously,” he added. “All the people back home and all the homies in the USA that were rooting for me, I’m sorry, I know I definitely let some people down.” Still, he said, he was “stoked to make the finals and be out skating with these amazing guys.”Horigome, who also beat Huston to win last month’s world championships in Rome, consistently landed his tricks down a twelve-step, three-rail staircase. That more than compensated for his unexceptional pair of runs, in which skaters have 45 seconds to plot a path through an obstacle course of rails, benches and ramps.Huston showed flashes of brilliance with a spectacular second run, top scoring with 9.11 points out of 10, then notched 9.09 on his first trick, only to tumble on the next four attempts as he struggled to rediscover his momentum. He sprained his right wrist in training four days earlier and flexed it gingerly on Sunday after a couple of falls. “It’s just how it goes sometimes. You’re doing tricks that are that technical and flipping and spinning your board on a rail, it’s hard to get the right one every time.”Nyjah Huston falls during his run. Photograph: Toby Melville/ReutersThis is not a sport that obsesses over statistics or demands cut-throat competitive zeal, but failing to reach the podium is an upset given that the Californian is considered to be the most successful contest skateboarder ever. And the hottest brand.His many wins have brought him prize money, sponsorships, apparel lines, a board business, a private skatepark and a Laguna Beach home swanky enough to be featured in Architectural Digest. He has skated on top of a Lamborghini and owned one himself.The women’s street edition is on Monday. The park event, showcasing spring-heeled tricks in steep-sided bowls, takes place on 4-5 August and 13-year-old Sky Brown will compete for Team GB.There cannot be many Olympic disciplines to feature athletes competing while wearing earbuds and a post-event press conference where the medal winners discuss the occupational hazards of being busted for trespassing and disorderly conduct.In a sport with a renegade soul, Huston has occasionally run afoul of the law for speeding, trespassing and excessive revelry, most recently a charge in February (later dismissed) of creating a nuisance for holding a party during the pandemic.But his mellow vibe shrouds his formidable work ethic. “I think a lot of people out there just think of me as someone that’s naturally gifted at skateboarding and doesn’t have to work too hard for what he does and drives a Lambo and hangs out with chicks,” he told Thrasher magazine.Skateboarding, along with surfing, sport climbing and 3x3 basketball, is part of the International Olympic Committee’s strategy to woo younger fans usually more captivated by the X Games and the sort of action sports that inevitably seem to be bankrolled by Red Bull.All the same, there is a line as thin as a handrail between selling it to a new audience, and selling out - less in monetary terms, since corporate sponsorship and professionalism is hardly new - than in imposing rigid structures and competitive pressures on a loose, laid-back activity where trends rise up and spread from city sidewalks.This was, the stadium emcee bellowed as the first heat got underway, like watching “the first man on the moon - goin’ down in history”. If so, this was one small nollie flip for man, one giant grind along a purpose-built metal stair rail for mankind.The Ariake Urban Sports Park in Tokyo, Japan. Photograph: Fazry Ismail/EPAIt’s tempting to wonder what the Californian post-war pioneers and later generations who shaped a counter-cultural, anti-rules and anti-competitive ethos would make of a two-decimal place scoring system that processes creativity into criteria.With skyscraping apartment blocks looming over the venue as elevated trains rumbled nearby, in a more normal time the area would have been thrumming with crowds, even in oppressive and energy-sapping heat and humidity. The final unreasonably (if conveniently for US west-coast viewers) took place in the early afternoon in Tokyo, the warmest time of the day. Huston said that the temperature affected him physically as well as altering how his board handled.The 7,000-capacity venue was virtually empty, with a Games volunteer holding up a sign at the entrance instructing team officials and media to refrain from celebrating and making noise, other than clapping.Polite applause permitted: not quite the motto anyone had in mind at an event originally designed as the centrepiece of a buzzing urban festival. Anyway, the decibel level rose as Horigome rolled closer to gold. “My house is like 20 minutes from here,” he said. “I don’t think skateboarding is well recognised yet in Japan. I want to tell many people how fun it is.”Despite the strange context, the medallists looked thrilled and a little awed. “There’s nothing like the Olympic Games,” Eaton said. “I’m beyond stoked.”

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