Horigome, who received the primary gold in Olympic males’s avenue skateboarding in Tokyo three years in the past by touchdown 4 high-scoring tips, leads a category of elite Japanese male skate boarders who thrive on innovation.
He and his friends distinguish themselves by creating distinctive tips that merge quite a lot of kinds. Many of those tips are so troublesome that rivals are unable to duplicate them.
In one instance, the Japanese skater Sora Shirai’s “cab sugarcane” at a current Olympic qualifier fused two intricate tips, a “caballerial” and a “sugarcane.” The judges gave it a rating of 97.07, on the time the very best for a trick at such an occasion.
Shirai begins the trick with a troublesome maneuver — driving backward with the identical foot place as going ahead.
He crouches as he prepares to go airborne.
After rotating his shoulders …
… he begins to spin counterclockwise.
Then he lands on the rail going through backward, a operate of muscle reminiscence and years of coaching.
Here he finishes a “caballerial,” a sort of 360-degree spin invented by the American skateboarder Steve Caballero.
To prime it off, he slides down with the rail between his wheels and a part of his board hanging off to the aspect, all with out dropping his steadiness.
After finishing the slide, he spins into one other 180-degree flip, utilizing his arms to information his physique.
He lands easily, a element that can enhance his rating. With that he completes the “sugarcane.” It was all accomplished inside three seconds.
“There’s a million things that can go wrong here,” however the execution is about nearly as good as one may anticipate, stated Jason Rothmeyer, an expert skateboarding choose.
Source: Video from World Skate
It’s laborious to pinpoint why Japanese skaters have dominated skilled skateboarding over the previous six or so years, or why they’re so good at tips. Team Japan clinched the gold medal in each women and men’s avenue skateboarding in Tokyo.
“It’s like the famous definition of pornography: You know it when you see it,” Jonathan Russell Clark, the writer of a 2022 historical past of the game, stated of Team Japan’s technical prowess.
“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,” he stated.
Japanese feminine skaters have proven related strengths at Olympic qualifiers as the lads: They rating excessive in tips however are much less constant in runs. But the ladies are much less weak to the rule adjustments, as they carry out higher than their rivals in each components of the competitors.
But a scoring change launched after the Tokyo Olympics may curb that dominance – and their means to win medals on the street skateboarding occasion.
If the lads’s “street” competitors on the Tokyo Olympics had been scored utilizing the brand new Paris format, Kelvin Hoefler of Brazil, who completed second, would have received gold.
Horigome would have needed to accept bronze.
Note: The totals are decrease if scored with the brand new system as a result of, on the Tokyo Games, the full rating was the sum of 4 scores — the 4 highest of any of the 2 runs and 5 tips. But within the new scoring system, the full rating is the sum of solely three — the very best run rating and the 2 finest trick scores.
The avenue occasion consists of two 45-second runs and 5 standalone tips over an impediment course. The tips are scored primarily based on a skater’s two finest standalone tips, and danger and innovation are sometimes rewarded.
To ace the run part, a skater should land numerous tips – not essentially troublesome ones – persistently.
At the Tokyo Games, if an athlete did nicely on standalone tips however scored comparatively poorly on runs, each run scores had been robotically erased. That’s what occurred in Horigome’s case.
But in Paris, a kind of runs will depend towards a skateboarder’s rating it doesn’t matter what.
World Skate, a global physique that units Olympic skateboarding guidelines, modified the format for Paris after convening a committee to investigate outcomes from Tokyo. The normal feeling was that the format didn’t sufficiently seize the game’s full breadth and variety, stated Luca Basilico, World Skate’s skateboarding director.
Ian Michna, the writer of the skate journal Jenkem, stated he welcomed the brand 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 stated.
But which will pose challenges for Team Japan as a result of its runs throughout current Olympic qualifiers weren’t particularly constant, a New York Times assessment of outcomes information suggests.
Even as Japanese skaters landed the perfect standalone tips, the Times evaluation discovered, their run scores lagged behind these of their prime rivals, significantly these from Brazil and the United States.
Source: World Skate
Notes: Shown are the very best run and trick scores of athletes who will compete within the Paris Olympics. Only scores on the finals of the Paris Olympic qualifiers are included.
American and Brazilian male avenue skaters had been usually stronger than their Japanese counterparts on runs as a result of they executed extra tips, fluidly and repeatedly, throughout the impediment course.
By distinction, Japanese skaters usually started and ended their run sequences with high-skill tips that impressed followers however risked damaging their general scores.
Here’s an instance from a post-Olympic competitors in Rome two years in the past.
Horigome landed solely seven tips throughout his run, and didn’t land his most troublesome one.
But Nyjah Huston, a adorned American skater, landed over 10 tips throughout quite a lot of obstacles. Some of these tips had been comparatively straightforward, however his general rating was increased.
It’s attainable that the format change received’t have an effect on Team Japan’s efficiency in Paris.
Basilico, the World Skate consultant, stated that the change had been “done for the sake of representing skateboarding the way we believe it should be represented,” and to not goal particular athletes.
Liz Akama, a member of the Japan ladies’s workforce, stated she was not frightened in regards to the scoring change.
Akama stated that high-scoring, standalone tips usually are not her forte. The format change has allowed her to focus extra on perfecting tips she will be able to already land, together with ones that could possibly be utilized in her runs.
“Although the rules have changed, everyone is adapting,” she stated.
Case in level: Horigome received the Olympic qualifier in Budapest final month partly by delivering a various, nine-trick run that seemed much like Huston’s 2022 efficiency in Rome.
Shirai and a Japanese teammate, Ginwoo Onodera, completed second and third.
At the ultimate Olympics qualifier, in Budapest, Japanese skate boarders dominated the podiums. From left to proper: Ginwoo Onodera, Yuto Horigome and Sora Shirai.
Attila Kisbenedek/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Several consultants predicted in interviews that Team Japan would excel in Paris as a result of the nation’s finest avenue skaters have confirmed their versatility in competitors after competitors.
Horigome additionally received this 12 months’s Tampa Pro, a avenue occasion the place the scoring is predicated totally on runs.
“I think they’ll do incredibly well again, and they always will,” stated Kevin Harris, a Canadian ex-pro who has deep ties to Japan’s skateboarding neighborhood. “They’re producing the best skateboarders on the planet.”