Among an intensely stacked final lineup, it was Australian Keegan Palmer who successfully defended his Olympic men’s skateboard park champion title and kept gold out of the grasps of American favorites Tate Carew and Tom Schaar.
In their Olympic debut, Schaar took home silver while Brazil’s Augusto Akio nabbed bronze.
The three medalists emerged victorious from a fierce field in which a slim 0.20 points separated the fourth-place finisher Pedro Barros of Brazil from the podium.
That wasn’t the only crazy part.
The final opened with six athletes uncharacteristically falling on their first run. Only Schaar and Palmer, who dropped in seventh and eighth, respectively, were able to stomp high-scoring runs. Palmer’s run, which scored 93.11 points out of the possible 100 was high enough to win him the Olympic gold medal.
Schaar’s first run earned him a 90.11 that was initially good enough for bronze. He later followed it up with an incredible 92.23-point second run that consisted of an alley-oop to lipslide, tailslide, 540 tailgrab, 360 stalefish, 540 melon, and kickflip Indy to fakie, which bumped him into second place. Legendary professional skateboarder Tony Hawk was seen with his mouth agape and Snoop Dogg was so amazed that he greeted Schaar with a hug as they awaited Schaar’s score.
Lighthearted Akio was having a blast. Even though he wasn’t in a podium position for most of the final, he was grinning and juggling Brazilian flag-colored clubs. He wasn’t sweating his third run’s score. He sprinted to his clubs immediately after his run and started juggling, not seeming fazed as the commentators announced that he moved into third place.
SEE MORE: Brazilian Akio juggles way to men’s skateboard park final
Ever-calm Carew had a strong second run that included a stylish smith grind, front blunt, nosegrind, backside nosegrind, heelflip Indy, and smooth hardflip Indy grab that Hawk and Snoop Dogg loved. His 91.17-point score was only high enough to finish fifth, highlighting his competitors’ impressive talent.
Heading into the final run, both Carew and Schaar needed to land an even crazier run to top Palmer. Carew went first but fell after a strong start.
SEE MORE: American Tate Carew rips through men’s skateboard park final
Then it was up to Schaar to determine which color medals he and Palmer would leave Paris with. He dropped in with a spectacular alley-oop disaster, leading into a tailslide, heelflip Indy, and backside lipslide before he fell in the very last seconds of the run to claim silver.
In the preliminary round an hour earlier, American Gavin Bottger, another expected medal contender, fell short of advancing to the final after being bumped out of the top eight competitors. Bottger landed a clean run that scored 86.95 points, but it wasn’t enough to move forward in such stacked company.
SEE MORE: U.S. skateboarder Bottger squeezed out of men’s park final
Age is but a number
In a stark comparison to the women’s park competition in which the youngest competitor was 11-year-old Zheng Haohao of China, the competitors in the men’s park competition skewed much older.
Seventeen-year-old Keefer Wilson of Australia was the youngest athlete while 49-year-old South African Dallas Oberholzer and 51-year-old Andy Macdonald of Great Britain topped the field. Oberholzer started skating in 1985, well before medalists Palmer, Schaar, and Akio were even born. Macdonald is another skateboarding trailblazer who won the vert doubles event at X Games five years in a row with professional skateboarder Tony Hawk. Though Oberholzer and Macdonald did not advance to the final, they landed solid tricks in the preliminary round to assert the fact that skateboarding is for everyone.
“This might be it. This might be ‘the one’,” Macdonald said of how competing at the 2024 Paris Olympics ranks in his career. “Just to stay on my board, do the run I wanted to do – I mean, I set the bar pretty low coming into this event. I went through every scenario, worst-case scenario, and it came out best-case scenario. So I’m just so happy to have been a part of it and it was a joy to skate.”
SEE MORE: Old dudes rule! Macdonald, Oberholzer compete at Olympics
Men’s skateboard park medalists
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