The pack of girls who are owning the spotlight in Women’s Skateboarding in Tokyo
View(s):Four new sports have been added to the 2020 Olympics: Karate, Sport Climbing, Skateboarding, and Surfing. Out of which the girls of women’s skateboarding are capturing the spotlight in Tokyo!
Momiji Nishiya of Japan and Rayssa Leal of Brazil won the gold and silver medals respectively, in the women’s street skateboarding event held last week in Tokyo. Monji and Rayssa both being 13 years old, are the first women to compete in the Olympics in this particular sport newly added, and win.
Over the past 50 years, skateboarding has evolved from counterculture to mainstream, from the X Games to the Olympics. And with that final ascension, the sport is determined to further establish itself and attract a new generation of fans – and aspiring superstars – with its platform. The women’s game, especially, could use that bump, and in Tokyo, it may just capture its future audience by putting its future stars on the worldwide stage.
To that end, skateboarding has no minimum age requirement. That’s true of many Olympic sports, but some, like gymnastics and boxing, do have a cutoff set by their governing bodies. Skateboarders, though, are only subject to their home countries’ minimum age requirements, which for the majority of nations, including the United States, is 13. (Thirty-five countries do have higher minimums, the most restrictive of which – Colombia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Russian Federation – require competitors to be 18.) National Olympic Committees are known to make exceptions, too; 12-year-old Syrian table-tennis prodigy Hend Zaza competed in Tokyo, and another 12-year-old, Japanese skateboarder Kokona Hiraki, will get her shot in an event next week.
Olympic officials estimate it may have been the youngest podium ever – but it may not be the last all-teen medal ceremony this summer. There is, after all, another women’s skateboarding event at the Ariake Urban Sports Park in Tokyo.
Had this summer’s games not been delayed a year, the field might’ve looked wholly different. Nishiya and Leal wouldn’t have been able to compete. Same goes for Britain’s Sky Brown, the youngest professional skateboarder in the world, who was just 12 when she qualified for the Games. Brown, who turned 13 just 11 days before the opening ceremony, is expected to contend for a medal in park skateboarding on 5 August – but she won’t even be the youngest competitor in the event. That distinction goes to Hiraki, who turns 13 next month.
There’s no arguing, though, that skateboarding represents the biggest injection of youth the Olympics has seen in generations. Leal, the 13-year-old street skateboarder who took silver, was the Games’ youngest medalist since 1928. If Brown makes a podium next Thursday, she’ll capture that distinction. And if not, she’ll have another chance in three years in Paris, and likely another four years after that. The future of women’s skateboarding is a pack of girls who have already arrived.
Devuni Goonewardene