Yoshizawa, Akama win gold, silver in street skateboarding at Paris Games
PARIS – Coco Yoshizawa and Liz Akama of Japan took gold and silver in women’s street skateboarding at the Paris Olympics on Sunday and Rayssa Leal of Brazil got bronze to win her second medal in the sport.
Akama was in first place after landing her first two tricks before Yoshizawa slid down the big rails on the course on her fourth trick attempt, earning a score of 96.49 to pass her teammate.
The trick, which elicited gasps from the crowd, got the highest score of the day.
Yoshizawa was the last woman to finish the competition and she’d already won gold before she attempted her fifth trick. But she landed it anyway as a bit of a victory lap — raising her arms high above her head as she rolled toward her coach to celebrate.
Akama took the lead early in the finals after posting a 89.26 on her second run. And when she got a score of 92.62 on her first trick, she looked like the one to beat before Yoshizawa’s late surge.
The 16-year-old Leal, who needed a late run in the preliminary round to make it into the finals, also made a run late in the last round to medal again after taking silver in the Tokyo Games. Leal was the youngest Brazilian ever to participate in the Olympics when she won at 13.
Leal, who amassed 6.6 million Instagram followers after her breakout performance in Tokyo, scored a 92.88 on her second trick but didn’t land her next two to set up a dramatic finish.
She raised her arms to pump up a crowd filled with fans in Brazil’s colors, many waving the country’s flag. She then executed her last trick attempt for a score of 88.83 to earn some more hardware.
Cui Chenxi of China, who is 14, came in fourth, and Americans Poe Pinson and Paige Heyn finished in the next two spots.
Funa Nakayama, the bronze medalist in Tokyo, came in seventh after failing to land any of her five tricks. Australian Chloe Covell was last after also failing to land a trick.
The event, held at the outdoor venue of La Concorde Urban Park, was the first of this year’s skateboarding competition after the men’s street competition was postponed from Saturday to Monday because of rain.
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