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 professional 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. A 20-year-old American, the Arizona-born Jagger Eaton, 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. 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 at the world championships in Rome last month, consistently landed his tricks down a 12-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.”
This 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 in the sport’s history. 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.
Quick GuideAbe siblings both triumph in golden day for Japan
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Japanese judoka Uta Abe (pictured) triumphed in the women's 52kg category in Tokyo on Sunday, hours before her brother Hifumi took gold in the men's 66kg final, making history as the first siblings to win gold medals on the same day.
The feat came a day after triple world champion judoka Naohisa Takato secured Japan's first gold medal with victory over Taiwan's Yang Yung-wei, underscoring the strength of the host nation at the sport born here 140 years ago.
In a bright start to the Games for Japan amid a resurgence of the coronavirus outbreak, its team secured two further golds on Sunday, in swimming and skateboarding.
Uta, 21, dominated her bouts in the 52kg category, but was taken deep into golden score overtime in the final against Amandine Buchard of France, eventually pinning her down on her back and holding on for the win.
"This was a dream for us," Uta told reporters, when asked about achieving simultaneous golds with her brother. "It makes me believe dream comes true as long as I try to achieve it."
Uta and Hifumi hugged and congratulated each other after the post-match ceremony, she said, adding that her brother always goes ahead of her to lead the way.
"I was touched by how they encouraged each other," Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said on Twitter in congratulating the Abes. The bronze medals went to Odette Giuffrida of Italy and Chelsie Giles of Britain.
In the men's final, Hifumi Abe, 23, defeated Georgia's Vazha Margvelashvili to take gold. Bronze medals went to Baul An of South Korea and Daniel Cargnin of Brazil.
"I didn't feel any pressure but rather it made me crave for it," Hifumi told reporters, when asked how Uta's gold medal affected his performance in the final. "Today is the best day of my life." Reuters
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 attract 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 laid-back activity where trends rise and spread from city sidewalks.
This was, the stadium emcee bellowed as the first heat got under way, 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.
It’s tempting to wonder what the Californian post-war pioneers and later generations who shaped a countercultural, 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 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.”