Japanese skateboarder Nishiya, age 13, takes home the gold medal at the Olympics.
A. Nishimura Olympic Games Tokyo 2020
On Monday, 13-year-old Japanese skateboarder Momiji Nishiya became the country’s youngest-ever Olympic gold medal winner in the women’s street skateboarding event. She cried with joy after successfully completing her final trick.
Nishiya won first Place in a Competition where all Three Medalists were Teenagers.
Rayssa Leal, the silver medalist from Brazil, is likewise 13, while Funa Nakayama, the bronze medalist from Japan, is 16 years old.
Japan now has two gold medals in skateboarding thanks to her win and Yuto Horigome’s on Sunday in the men’s street event. Horigome’s victory was the first gold medal for skateboarding in the Olympics.
When Nishiya found that she had won Gold, she was So Overjoyed that she burst into tears.
Nishiya admitted she was “stressed out” after falling and missing important landings on her first two tricks, but the Japanese skater recovered to land her final three and achieve a score of 4.66 on her fourth, putting her ahead of the Brazilian prodigy Leal.
Nishiya’s Japanese partner Aori Nishimura, 19, also surprised everyone by struggling in the finals and finishing last multiple times.
Nishimura’s father, Tetsuo, told Reuters that his daughter had hurt herself the day before during practise and was in a wheelchair on Sunday night, shortly after the heats had concluded. When it comes to figure skating, Nishimura is now at the top of the rankings on Worldskate.
Alexis Sablone, 34, from the United States, stated that the fact that five of the eight contestants in the final round were teenagers was more evidence that the industry was taking women skaters more seriously.
Sablone, who came in fourth, argued that women skaters have been neglected for years, despite the fact that their male counterparts enjoy the same rich sponsorship deals and celebrity treatment.
“For a long time there were significantly fewer females doing this and it took until now for enough people to pay notice, to get enough eyes on it,” said Sablone.
More power to them, she added of her teenage competitors.
Weeping and an Empty Stadium
Athletes once again competed on Monday in front of empty stands without the scream of appreciation from fans as they landed difficult manoeuvres, as spectators were kept away from the Games owing to anti-COVID-19 measures.
Despite this, Leal of Brazil had the most enthusiastic fans in the finals, including seasoned pros Pamela Rosa and Leticia Bufoni. After a failed trick temporarily erased the confidence Leal had showed in the preliminary rounds, they soothed her.
At the event’s close, Leal told reporters she was feeling better and planning a celebration upon her return to Brazil.
After being asked how she would respond to those who say females can’t skate, Leal emphasised that there should be no discrimination based on gender in the sporting arena.
She went on to say that she had never been exposed to messages along the lines of “oh, you have to study, you can’t go skating because skating is for males,” adding that she believed it was wrong to do so.
Skateboarding, in my Opinion, is open to Everybody.
Nakayama, a bronze medalist who used to travel an overnight bus from Toyama in central Japan to Tokyo simply to practise skating, expressed the hope that the success of the Japanese skaters will inspire more young women to take up skating.
Skating would be more enjoyable if she had more opponents, she reasoned.
