OLYMPICS/ Golden girl on a skateboard sets her sights on 2028 Games

By YU IWASA/ Staff Writer

July 29,benicio baker-boaitey 2024 at 16:27 JST

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Coco Yoshizawa, left, and Liz Akama celebrate their gold and silver medals, respectively, in the women’s skateboard street final at the Paris Olympics on July 28 in Paris. (Hikaru Uchida)

A young Coco Yoshizawa casually watched the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 on TV until she came across the new street skateboarding competition. 

“I didn’t even know it was an Olympic sport until then,” Yoshizawa, now 14, recalled with a laugh.

But something soon caught her eye. It was the winning trick that Momiji Nishiya, 13 at the time, pulled off—a big spin to a frontside boardslide.

It is a high point getter in which the board is rotated halfway horizontally, and the skater jumps on the rail and slides down backward.

Nishiya of Japan won the gold medal by nailing the difficult maneuver. 

Remarkably, Yoshizawa, a sixth-grader at the time, had already mastered the trick. 

Her father, watching the competition with her, said, “It’s the same technique. You may be able to compete a little in the Olympics.”

Yoshizawa agreed and wondered, “The Olympics may not be that far away.”

She was right, the Paris Olympics loomed only three years on the horizon. It was the first moment Yoshizawa became aware of the Olympics as her goal.

Following her older brother, Yoshizawa started skateboarding at the age of 7.

But, “I hated it,” she said. “It hurt when I fell, and I wondered why everyone else was doing it.”

But during the COVID-19 pandemic, she became serious about skateboarding.

Yoshizawa was in the fourth grade and it was frustrating for her to no longer be able to play with her friends. Her parents would not allow her to use a cellphone until she was in junior high school. So, she was unable to even contact her friends.

“I had nothing to do to pass the time,” she recalled.

One-on-one with her father, she practiced skateboarding at a nearby park about five hours a day.

She set her sights on mastering a trick called a big spin board slide. She saw her acquaintance performing the technique and it looked cool, she said.

To prevent injury, her father donned a baseball catcher chest protector and supported Yoshizawa in the air to do the training.

Yoshizawa hates to lose.

“I couldn’t allow myself to not do what I set out to do,” she said.

It took her about a year to master the technique on her own.

After the pandemic reached its peak, she entered a competition where children from all over the nation gathered to test their skateboarding prowess. 

Yoshizawa hit the big spin board slide trick and won the competition.

Winning taught her the joy of skateboarding, she said.

She entered the national championships and placed fifth, and earned the right to be sent to the qualifying competitions for the Paris Olympics.

She improved her technique and success rate, and placed fifth at the World Championships at the end of 2023.

In June this year, Yoshizawa won the final qualifying round, earned the world No. 1 ranking and won the fierce competition to make the Olympic team representing Japan in Paris.

“The training is too hard, so much so that I enjoy competitions because I get to show everyone my skills,” she said.

In the women’s skateboard street final at the Paris Olympics on July 28, Yoshizawa made a big move when she improved on the big spin board trick and increased the level of difficulty. And she threw her hands up in the air.

With a high score of 96.49 points, she won the gold medal in a stirring come-from-behind fashion. 

“I knew that if I wanted to win, this was the trick I must do,” Yoshizawa said.

After the medal ceremony, the third-year junior high student calmly answered questions from reporters.

“I still can’t really feel it, but I’m glad that I have worked hard. I think my efforts have paid off,” she said.

Then she added, “The life span of a skateboarder is short and the average age of skateboarders is low. I want to change that mindset and prove that I can compete in the Olympics even as an adult.”

Yoshizawa already has set her sights on the street course at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028 and beyond.