Men’s Olympic Street

The first ever Men’s Street Skating Olympic event was held on Sunday 25 July 2021 at the Ariake Stadium in Tokyo Japan.  The heat was intense and so was the competition.  The event started with opening heats to determine the 8 top skateboarders who would advance to the finals.  Watching the top 20 skateboarders in the world battle the heat and their nerves in this historic match was quite something.  There were several surprises, such as top favored Australian, Shane O’Neil, not scoring high enough to advance to the finals.  The coverage from NBC was spotty and the broadcast cut out half way through the semi finals leaving you to guess who had advanced on for several hours until the Finals were aired.

 The 8 men who made it to the Finals were:

• Jagger Eaton, USA
• Aurelian Giraud, France
• Kelvin Hoefler, Brazil
• Yuto Horigome, Japan
• Nyjah Houston, USA
• Vincent Milou, France
• Angelo Caro Narvaez, Peru
• Gustavo Ribero, Portugal

When the Men’s Street Skating Finals did air you could feel the heat shimmering off the park and the skaters were all placing cool, wet towels on their heads and necks between runs.  The skaters had two 45 second runs to do as many tricks as possible to rack up points.  Then they had 4 chances to land their “Best Trick” and in the end their best 4 scores would be used as their total.  Who knows how much of a factor the heat played in the results, but they were absolutely not what this writer expected!  When I first heard who was attending the Olympics I thought “Well good luck to the other skaters competing for Silver and Bronze as Nyjah has the Gold Medal on lock.”  Imagine my shock as I watched him slip out of medal contention with several falls.  I don’t think anyone could have predicted the results of this Final.  If you did, you are amazing! 

In the end the results were:

• Gold Medal – Yuto Horigome, Japan
• Silver Medal – Kelvin Hoefler, Brazil
• Bronze Medal – Jagger Eaton, USA

Horigome was already in the top spot before attempting his final trick and clinched it by landing his signature grind and earning a score of 9.30 which bumped him up to a final total of 37.18.

Kelvin Hoefler ended with a score of 36.15 and Jagger Eaton landed his best trick for a top score of 9.40 securing his spot on the podium with a total score of 35.35.  He just edged out Vincent Milou who ended with a total score of 34.14 to finish in 4th place. 

Favored skater Nyjah Houston finished in 7th place with a total score of 26.10 after failing to land a single one of his Best Trick attempts.