Kai Shinna's captivating silver medal run! Skateboard Park - Playback Paris Olympics 2024

Review of the Paris Olympics "Skateboard Park"

The park skateboarding event is a competition in which skaters perform a number of tricks on a bowl-shaped course that includes multiple slopes, curves, and obstacles. The course includes obstacles that look like cut-out cylindrical pipes, and skaters use these to perform tricks. The beauty and height of the tricks are evaluated. The competition consists of three 45-second runs, and the winner is the one with the highest score. Each skater must perform a variety of difficult tricks, and the judging criteria are divided into five categories: the difficulty of the trick, the quality, the use of the entire course, the flow and consistency, and the number of times the trick is repeated. What is particularly important is how many obstacles the skater can use to successfully perform the trick with speed and height. How efficiently the skater uses the course greatly affects the evaluation. In park skateboarding, the course design is often not made public at the stage when the skaters practice, so flexibility and improvisation skills are also tested. Therefore, skaters must understand the characteristics of the course through official practice and strategically think about when to perform their best tricks.

Playback: Hot moments from the Paris 2024 Olympics

The most exciting moment of the tournament was when Keegan Palmer of Australia won the gold medal in the men's park event. Palmer had also won a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics, making this his second consecutive victory. He showed off a run that included high airs from the first run, and got off to a good start with 93.11 points. For his second run, he appeared while stirring up the crowd. He showed off a huge air in the middle of the run, exciting the crowd, but he made a mistake and was unable to improve his score to 63.66 points. As a result, no one was able to beat the record of his first run, and he was confirmed to have won his second consecutive gold medal without waiting for his third performance. Palmer had also excited the crowd in the preliminaries by performing big moves such as "360" and "540". It can be said that he was the athlete who excited the crowd the most throughout the entire tournament, not to mention winning the gold medal.

Playback Paris Olympics 2024 [Moments when Japanese athletes won medals]

From the Japanese team, 14-year-old Kokona Hiraki showed a great performance and won the silver medal. In the final, Kai scored 91.98 points in her first run and continued to play an aggressive style. In her second run, she made a mistake at the end and scored 79.79 points, but she still took the lead at this stage. However, in the final run, Alisa True, who was in third place, scored 93.18 points and overtook her. Sky Brown followed with 92.31 points and slid into second place behind True. Kai, who was overtaken by the two in one go, was not to be outdone, and in her final run she thrilled the audience with a flowing trick. She recorded a high score of 92.63 points, but was just one step behind True in the top spot, resulting in a disappointing silver medal. Kai had also won a silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics, and was just one step away from the gold medal at this tournament. Still, she was seen praising True and Brown, who had fought alongside her. Kai, born in 2008, will be 20 years old at the next Los Angeles Olympics, so he will still have plenty of chances to win an Olympic gold medal.

Athletes that the King Gear editorial team noticed at the Paris Olympics 2024

A notable athlete other than the Japanese in this event is Alisa True, who won the gold medal in the women's event. True, who is from Australia, has attracted attention for her outstanding technique and stable performance, and showed off a spectacular ride in the final. After the second run, she overtook Kai Shinna, who was in the lead, to win the gold medal. Although she failed to land some tricks in her first run, she landed a difficult 360 in her second run and scored 90.11 points. She continued to be aggressive in her subsequent runs, successfully landing two 540s and scoring 93.18 points in her final chance. Another athlete who attracted attention was Sky Brown from the UK, who competed in the same event. At the Tokyo Olympics, she won the bronze medal at the age of 13, becoming the youngest medalist in British history. She also showed a stable performance in this tournament and came in third place. She aims to compete in skateboarding and surfing at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

Both True and Brown have Japanese mothers. This means that in this event, along with Kai, who won the silver medal, Japanese athletes monopolized the podium, which was a rare event. All three are still in their teens and are expected to have bright futures. We hope that they will compete with each other and lead the skateboarding world in the future.

[Kaishinna] Paris Olympic Games results

Qualifying: 1st place (highest score: 88.07 points)

Final: 2nd place (highest score: 92.63 points)

[Commentary] Silver medal for the second consecutive Olympics! "Women's Park Skateboarding" Silver Medal Kaishinna

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*The information in this article is current as of the time of publication.