Olympic Games
Yuto Horigome wins gold medal in Olympics’ first-ever skateboarding event
The 2021 Tokyo Olympics debuted their first skateboarding event this year and Japan’s own Yuto Horigome won gold in the same city he learned to skateboard.
The Olympic Games organizers hoped to showcase the fun and adrenaline that skateboarding involves, and they certainly achieved that.
Horigome's nollie secures him the gold medal in first-time Olympic Skateboarding Game
As for Horigome, his highest-scoring trick was an impressive one called a nollie 270 noseslide, in which he flipped the board underneath him and slid down a jagged rail on the nose of the board.
Horigome, 22 years old, faced experienced competitors like world champion Nyiah Huston and X-Games gold medalist for Brazil, Kelvin Hoefler. But his last trick sealed the deal. “I couldn’t miss the fourth trick so I put everything I believed and worked for into that trick,” Horigome said.
After Horigome, Kelvin Hoefler took the silver, just one point behind Horigome, and USA’s Jagger Eaton went home with the bronze.