Ginwoo Onodera of Japan in action during training.
Credit: Reuters Photo
Japanese skateboarders are creating some of the most difficult tricks in the history of the sport, and landing them in high style.
But at the Paris Olympics, the Japanese male skaters may have a problem.
Because a new scoring system will prioritize a weaker aspect of their repertoire — “runs” that require athletes to string many tricks fluidly — the Japanese skaters won’t be able to medal on the strength of tricks alone.
Yuto Horigome, who landed four high-scoring tricks to win street skateboarding’s first gold medal in Tokyo in 2021 as the sport made its Olympic debut, leads a class of elite Japanese skateboarders who thrive on innovation.
He and his peers distinguish themselves by creating tricks that merge a variety of styles. Many of these tricks are so difficult that competitors are unable to replicate them.
At a recent Olympic qualifier, Japanese skater Sora Shirai fused two intricate tricks, a “caballerial” and a “sugarcane,” into his so-called cab sugarcane. The judges gave it a score of 97.07, at the time the highest for a trick at such an event.
It’s hard to pinpoint why Japanese skaters have dominated professional skateboarding in recent years, or why they are so good at these tricks. Team Japan clinched the gold medal in men’s and women’s street skateboarding in Tokyo.
“It’s like the famous definition of pornography: You know it when you see it,” Jonathan Russell Clark, the author of a 2022 book on the history of the sport, said of Team Japan’s technical prowess, adding, “You can just tell that they’re doing something that the other skaters aren’t doing, even if you can’t explain it and have no idea about the technical specifics.”
But a scoring change introduced after the Tokyo Olympics could curb that dominance, and the team’s ability to win medals in the street skateboarding event.
If the men’s street competition at the Tokyo Olympics had been scored using the new Paris format, Kelvin Hoefler of Brazil, who finished second, would have won gold. Horigome would have had to settle for bronze.
The street event consists of two 45-second runs and five stand-alone tricks over an obstacle course. The tricks are scored based on a skater’s two best stand-alone tricks, and risk and innovation are often rewarded.
To ace the run section, a skater must land a large number of tricks, although not necessarily difficult ones, consistently.
At the Tokyo Games, if an athlete did well on stand-alone tricks but scored relatively poorly on runs, both run scores were automatically erased. That’s what happened in Horigome’s case.
But in Paris, one of those runs will count toward a skateboarder’s score no matter what.
World Skate, an international body that sets Olympic skateboarding rules, changed the format for Paris after convening a committee to analyze results from Tokyo. The general feeling was that the format did not sufficiently capture the sport’s full breadth and diversity, said Luca Basilico, the skateboarding director at World Skate.
Ian Michna, the publisher of the skate magazine Jenkem, said he welcomed the new format. “A run shows how consistent the skater is, how they skate stylistically, and gives you a much wider view of what they are capable of,” he said.
But that may pose challenges for Team Japan because its runs during recent Olympic qualifiers were not especially consistent, a New York Times review of results data suggests.
Even as Japanese skaters landed the best stand-alone tricks, the Times analysis found, their run scores lagged behind those of their top competitors, particularly those from Brazil and the United States.
Japanese female skaters have shown similar strengths at Olympic qualifiers as the men: They score high in tricks but are less consistent in runs. But compared to their competitors from other countries, they perform better in both parts of the competition.
American and Brazilian male street skaters were generally stronger than their Japanese counterparts on runs because they executed more tricks, fluidly and continuously, across the obstacle course.
By contrast, Japanese skaters often began and ended their run sequences with high-skill tricks that impressed fans but risked damaging their overall scores.
In a post-Olympic competition in Rome two years ago, for example, Horigome landed only seven tricks during his run, and failed to land his most difficult one.
But Nyjah Huston, a decorated American skater, landed over 10 tricks across a variety of obstacles. Some of those tricks were relatively easy, but his overall score was higher.
It’s possible that the format change won’t affect Team Japan’s performance in Paris.
Basilico said that the change had been “done for the sake of representing skateboarding the way we believe it should be represented,” and not to target specific athletes.
Liz Akama, a member of the Japanese women’s team, said she was not worried about the scoring change.
Akama said that high-scoring, stand-alone tricks are not her forte. The format change has allowed her to focus more on perfecting tricks she can already land, including ones that could be used in her runs.
“Although the rules have changed, everyone is adapting,” she said.
Case in point: Horigome won the Olympic qualifier in Budapest last month partly by delivering a diverse, nine-trick run. Shirai and a Japanese teammate, Ginwoo Onodera, finished second and third. Horigome also won this year’s Tampa Pro, a street event where the scoring is based entirely on runs.
Several experts predicted in interviews that Team Japan would excel in Paris because the country’s best street skaters have proved their versatility in competition after competition.
“I think they’ll do incredibly well again, and they always will,” said Kevin Harris, a former professional skateboarder from Canada who has deep ties to Japan’s skateboarding community. “They’re producing the best skateboarders on the planet.”