Women's park skateboarding brings two youngest Olympic medalists since 1936 and a delightful, unexpected lift
TOKYO — A bunch of friends got together to skateboard in a park on a very hot day, and when it was over, and they had worn all their fun, colorful clothes and tried their toughest tricks and hugged each other 100 times, the 19-year-old beat the 12-year-old who beat the 13-year-old.
Women’s park skateboarding arrived at the Summer Games Wednesday, giving the Olympics its two youngest medalists since 1936, a 1-2 Japanese finish and a delightful, unexpected lift.
Purists will shudder, but skateboarding has proven itself to be a fitting newcomer to the Olympics, a breath of fresh air — if such a thing was possible on an utterly oppressive, 91-degree day — in the middle of the Games’ long second week.
“This is insane,” said the 13-year-old bronze medalist, Sky Brown of Great Britain, after her adventurous morning and early afternoon of thrills and spills had come to an end. "Everyone did amazing, everyone was doing so good, I’m so proud of everyone and just being on the podium with my really good friend is just insane.”
She was speaking of Japan’s Sakura Yosozumi, who won the gold over her pre-teen teammate Kokona Hiraki, who became Japan’s youngest Olympic medalist ever.
Yosozumi won with a scintillating first run that scored 60.09, becoming the only competitor to break 60 points at Ariake Urban Sports Park, which looked like some sort of modern-day excavation site ringed by pink umbrellas. Everyone else made a run at Yosozumi, sometimes crashing in the effort, but in the end, no one could catch her.
Brown, who just turned 13 on July 7, made some history of her own, becoming Great Britain’s youngest Summer Olympian of all time and its youngest Summer Games medal winner ever. Hiraki and Brown are the first Olympic medalists to be this young since 12-year-old Noel Vandernotte, the coxswain for the French rowing team, won a bronze medal in 1936. Interestingly, he lived to be 96, passing away just last year.
American Brighton Zeuner, 17, who failed to qualify for the final, finishing 12th, was not surprised that Hiraki, who turns 13 on August 26, won the silver medal.
“I met her three years ago and she was always a unique skateboarder,” Zeuner said. “She’s very creative and she isn’t just a great athlete and a great skateboarder but also she looks like she’s having fun. She’s creative. And she’s awesome with her long hair. She looks so cute in a jumpsuit and she’s cool.”
That’s the 12-year-old in a nutshell. She wore a white jumpsuit reminiscent of a caddie at the Masters, and with her long straight black hair flowing from beneath her helmet, she looked like she owned the place. One would say she will be a force to be reckoned with heading into Paris in 2024, except there’s probably a nine-year-old out there somewhere whom she inspired this week who will be ready to beat her by then.
“Skateboarding is such a good community,” Zeuner said. “I’ve known pretty much all these girls since I was nine, eight years old. Just being here with them is absolutely surreal. … I used to do this after school and after Girl Scouts. I got my first board when I was eight years old, and now being here with girls that I grew up with, that’s what’s crazy.”
The friendships and camaraderie seem real and true.
“It is competitive but in a really healthy way,” Zeuner said. That explains why several of the finalists rushed to fourth-place finisher Misugu Okamoto of Japan after she failed to medal, putting her on their shoulders, lifting both her and their spirits.
“We’re just realizing that we are athletes,” Zeuner said. “We didn’t really know that before.”
If they didn’t think of skateboarding as a sport, what was it?
“A form of expression,” she said. “Sense of style, what music I like, everyone looks different on a skateboard and that’s the coolest part about it.”
On a really hot day, it was good to be that cool.