Japan Dominates, Rayssa Leal Wins Second Olympic Medal In Women’s Skateboard Street

The primary skateboarding occasion of the Paris 2024 Olympics is within the books, with the ladies’s road ultimate concluding Sunday night in Paris.

In a break from the wet climate that kicked off the Video games throughout Friday’s Opening Ceremony—and compelled the postponement of Saturday’s males’s skateboard road ultimate to Monday—Sunday was scorching and sunny in Paris.

It was a protracted day for the eight girls who made Sunday’s ultimate out of the 22 who began the prelims at midday Paris time. After a three-hour qualifier throughout the hottest a part of the day, the ultimate kicked off at 5:00 p.m. CEST.

Every Nationwide Olympic Committee (NOC) may qualify as much as three athletes in every of the 4 Olympic skateboarding occasions (males’s and girls’s road and park).

Forbes2024 Paris Olympics: Yuto Horigome Defends Gold, Jagger Eaton And Nyjah Huston Medal In Males’s Skateboard AvenueBy Michelle Bruton

Japan, which boasted three of the highest 4 skaters on the planet within the lead-up to Paris, maxed out its allotted quotas, and all three girls—Coco Yoshizawa, 14; Liz Akama, 15; and Tokyo 2020 bronze medalist Funa Nakayama, 19—made it by to the ultimate.

Rounding out the sphere of eight within the ultimate have been China’s Chenxi Cui, 14; Australia’s Chloe Covell, 14; the USA’s Paige Heyn, 16; Brazil’s Rayssa Leal, 16, who was the Tokyo 2020 silver medalist; and the USA’s Poe Pinson, 19.

Tokyo 2020 gold medalist Momiji Nishiya, 16, was ranked seventh on the planet forward of Paris 2024, however as Yoshizawa, Akama and Nakayama have been ranked Nos. 1, 2 and 4, respectively, Nishiya couldn’t earn a qualifying place for Paris.

Equally, Japan’s Yumeka Oda, 17, was ranked fifth and in addition bumped out of qualifying place.

Yoshizawa and Akama took gold and silver in Paris with scores of 272.75 and 265.95, respectively.

With Yoshizawa’s win, Japan has now taken gold on this occasion on each events it’s been held on the Olympics.

Leal took bronze to change into, for now, the one feminine skateboarder with two Olympic medals. (Park skate boarders Kokona Hiraki and Sakura Yosozumi of Japan and Sky Brown of Nice Britain may be a part of Leal in that rarefied air if they will make the rostrum of their occasion subsequent week.)

Yoshizawa and Akama have been the highest two qualifiers, respectively, in Sunday’s girls’s road prelims. Coming into Paris 2024, they have been additionally ranked No. 1 (Yoshizawa) and No. 2 (Akama) on the planet.

Leal was ranked No. 3, making for an Olympic podium that completely adopted the world rankings previous to the Video games.

Within the press convention following the ultimate, Yoshizawa and Akuna have been requested why they suppose Japan is so robust in girls’s skateboarding.

“The rationale why we’re very robust is the Japanese individuals are diligent and earnest and make efforts towards their targets and desires,” Akama stated by an interpreter.

“The surroundings in Japan is superb for training and in addition the individuals who aren’t pretty much as good, we will educate one another, and we could be stronger,” Yoshizawa stated, additionally by an interpreter.

At simply 16, Leal is already a veteran of the ladies’s road self-discipline, and he or she’s developed a status as a more in-depth. At the beginning of the fifth and ultimate greatest trick makes an attempt, Leal was sitting off the rostrum in fifth.

However she placed on a clinic, completely touchdown her kickflip Smith grind to bump up into third place with a rating of 253.37, which not one of the 4 skaters not already on the rostrum may high.

The gang taking within the girls’s road ultimate on the Place de la Concorde was simply composed of one-third Brazilian followers, and when Leal scored 71.66 on her first of two runs after which a 92.88 on her second trick try and an 88.83 on her fifth, they erupted with cheers, waving a sea of Brazil flags.

Leal had solely landed one trick, which meant she would want to land the fifth efficiently to have any probability of constructing the rostrum.

She hadn’t practiced the kickflip Smith grind on the Olympic course. “I used to be sort of afraid; I gained’t mislead you,” she stated with a smile. However she consulted together with her crew and, although it “wasn’t simple,” she determined to go large or go dwelling on her ultimate try.

Does Leal really feel that she performs higher beneath stress?

“Effectively, I feel that I can carry out nicely beneath stress however not at all times, really. However after I want a trick, I at all times get it, and this time was no completely different,” Leal stated by an interpreter. “It’s true that someway I put myself beneath stress, as a result of I wish to give my greatest and carry out nicely and present all of the methods I’ve.”

Akama wasn’t capable of land her fifth trick try, which secured the gold medal for Yoshizawa.

The scoring construction for road skateboarding has modified from what was used on the Tokyo Olympics.

ForbesHow Skateboarding Is Scored At The OlympicsBy Michelle Bruton

In Tokyo, skaters additionally had two 45-second runs and 5 trick makes an attempt, with every scored on a scale of 0 to 10. The whole rating was the sum of one of the best 4 scores from any of the runs or trick makes an attempt.

In Paris, nevertheless, every run or trick is scored between 0 and 100. The whole rating elements within the skater’s greatest run out of two and two greatest trick makes an attempt, for a complete potential rating of 300.

The rule change was made partly to make sure that each runs and trick makes an attempt rely towards an athlete’s ultimate rating. (On the Tokyo Video games, as an example, males’s road gold medalist Yuto Horigome had his two lowest scores in his two runs, so his ultimate rating was primarily based solely on methods.)

The boys’s road ultimate will start with prelims at midday CEST on Monday, July 29.

Girls’s Skateboard Avenue Outcomes

1. Coco Yoshizawa (JPN): 272.75
2. Liz Akama (JPN): 265.95
3. Rayssa Leal (BRA): 253.37
4. Chenxi Cui (CHN): 241.56
5. Poe Pinson (USA): 222.34
6. Paige Heyn (USA): 163.23
7. Funa Nakayama (JPN): 79.77
8. Chloe Covell (AUS): 70.33