By all accounts, the trick that won 14-year-old Coco Yoshizawa of Japan an Olympic gold medal in street skateboarding was an impressive one.
It’s called the big spin flip frontside boardslide, and in it the skateboard rotates and flips both vertically and horizontally before the skater lands on a rail and then slides down backwards. When she pulled it off during the final round yesterday, she earned 96.49 out of a total of 100 points.
But what’s even more incredible is that Yoshizawa had been doing that same trick at her local skatepark for years, not even realizing it was an Olympic caliber move that would win her a gold medal in the 2024 Paris Games.
Yoshizawa has been skateboarding for half her life—according to Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, she followed her older brother to the skatepark at age 7. There, she learned tricks from a local teacher.
But her brother didn’t stick with the sport for long, and Yoshizawa didn’t have a smartphone—her parents wouldn’t allow it until she reached junior high. Because she wasn’t plugged into skateboarding culture on social media, she and her family had no idea how good she was.
That is, until she watched the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics. There, she saw fellow Japanese skateboarder Momiji Nishiya—who was just 13 at the time—win the first-ever Olympic gold medal in the sport with the very same big spin flip frontside boardslide Yoshizawa had already mastered. “It was a shock, and for the first time I thought maybe I had a chance,” she told NHK.
From there, Yoshizawa began competing in tournaments. She finished fifth at the 2023 World Championships in Tokyo, then earned a bronze medal in street skating at the 2024 World Skateboarding Tour Dubai. In the first round of the Paris Olympic Qualifier Series, held in May in Shanghai, she took third; last month marked her first-ever victory, at the Olympic Qualifier Series in Budapest.
Yoshizawa credits her swift improvement with learning to focus on herself, rather than her competitors. “When the skater before me succeeds in a trick and gets a high score, I get the feeling that ‘I have to make it too,’ and I get anxious and make mistakes,” she told NHK. “So I try to think ‘congratulations’ no matter who makes a move, and I go into the competition with the feeling that I will do what I can.”
That approach paid off for her Sunday. In the women’s street skateboarding final, competitors each did two runs of 45 seconds, followed by a phase of five tricks. The best run of two earns each skater between 0 and 100 points, as does each of their best two tricks, so their total score is between 0 and 300.
Heading into the trick phase, Yoshizawa sat in sixth place. But for her fourth trick, she nailed the big spin flip frontside boardslide, securing her medal. (Watch it here, at the 2:22 mark.) “I was not so much happy but relieved that I made it,” she said afterward.
After she successfully landed all her moves, she raised her hands in victory, having finished the competition with 272.75 points. The two other medalists were also in their teens—her Japanese teammate Liz Akama, 15, won silver with 265.95 points, while 16-year-old Rayssa Leal of Brazil took home bronze with a score of 253.37.
While she knows there might be other young athletes inspired by her example, just like she was inspired by Nishiya, Yoshizawa plans to keep skating for years to come. “Skateboarders have a short career and the average age is low, so I want to prove that even adults can compete in the Olympics,” she told Tokyo Weekender.
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