High Stakes in Hungary
Which Japanese Street Skaters Will Make It To The 2024 Paris Olympics?
It's squeaky bum time for skateboarders looking to qualify for the Olympics! The Budapest World Skate Qualifier series is the last chance for street skaters to add points to their total. The 20* skaters with the most total points will qualify for the Paris Olympics.
* 22 skaters with host country spot and universality spot
But, caveat; each IOC continent (Africa, Asia, Americas, Europe, Oceania) is guaranteed 1 spot, and each IOC country can only send 3 skaters! All well and good for Shane O’Neil and Brandon Valjalo, securing their Oceania and Africa spots in Paris, respectively. For the Japanese skaters, it is looking to be an intra-national fight for those 3 tickets. Currently, there are 4 Japanese skaters in the top 10 World Skate rankings! Tokyo Gold Medalist, Yuto Horigome is just outside that, ranking 11.
.....So What Now?
The preliminary round is over, with 16 skaters progressing to the semi-finals on Saturday 22 June 2024. Top-ranked Nyjah Huston (3) and Gustavo Ribeiro (4) failed to qualify. But, unsurprisingly, all 5 of the Japanese skaters made it to the semi-finals to fight it out for their spot at the Olympics! So this had us at Skatesense wondering……
🛹 What are each Japanese 🇯🇵 skaters’ chances of qualifying ?
🛹 Does Yuto still have a chance to grab another gold medal 🥇?
🛹 Are Nyjah and Gustavo guaranteed to qualify 🎟️?
🛹 Who is going to the Olympics 🇫🇷?
The Skatealytics
After running 10,000 simulated results (Monte Carlo Simulations), the story becomes a bit clearer….
There are 12 skaters guaranteed qualified for the Olympics; including Nyjah Huston 🇺🇲 and Gustavo Ribeiro 🇵🇹! That leaves 14 skaters to battle it out for the remaining 8 spots! All 5 Japanese skaters are on the bubble 🫧; Ginwoo almost guaranteed in. For the Tokyo Olympics gold medalist, our simulations show Yuto Horigome only has a 16% chance of qualifying. The battle between Kairi, Toa, and Sora is tight, all with 57-67% chance of qualifying!
Probability of Qualifying for the Olympics
How do the Japanese skaters need to perform in the Semis and Finals to get to Paris?
❗If Ginwoo makes it to the Finals (8th place) - he is guaranteed a ticket
❗Sora and Toa need not come in last (16th) to have a chance at qualifying
❗Yuto needs to send it! He needs to place at least 4th to have a chance!
🗝 Keys to Success
Japanese Olympic hopefuls have 4 runs and 10 best-tricks to showcase their skills, and distinguish themselves as the best competitive street skaters in the world!
And we have a little idea of what it takes to impress the judges and win at this level….
🥇 Don’t Bail
All 5 Japanese olympic hopefuls have above average (75%) consistency; Kairi with the highest, landing 142 out of 168 trick attempts in World Skate qualifying competitions. He and Yuto have landed 94% of his tricks in his runs! But if Yuto wants to place in the top 4, he is also going to have to land his best-trick attempts.
🥇 Flip* Your Board
When it comes to technical skating, Kairi, Ginwoo, and Toa lead the way - hitting that sweet 🍭spot. Yuto and Sora’s style lends itself more to rotation-based tricks (rotating into slides and grinds on average 2.6 and 2.4 times in their run). Even though Yuto and Sora flip their board on average 1.1 times a run, we don’t think they should risk bailing in their run by adding more flip/technical tricks.
🥇 Variety is Key
Anyone who has watched these 5 skaters, knows they are about as versatile as they come (see “Flip Your Board”). Ginwoo Onodera has a bag of tricks 41 deep! Yuto, Sora, Kairi, and Toa still have way more than the average World Skate street skater (18 unique tricks).
When all these skaters can do such a large variety of difficult tricks, and consistently land them, how can they distinguish themselves from each other on Saturday and Sunday to secure one of the 3 spots on the Japan team?
🥇 Leverage Your Novelty
We think skaters should leverage “their novelty” to really stand out in the eye of the judges. Ginwoo does this; with 21 tricks that are “uniquely his” - no other skater has landed these in World Skate competitions (Yuto with 14). The average for the men’s street skaters is 5 👀 But Kairi (10), Toa (7), and Sora (10) are not far behind.
With all of that said, who do we predict will secure the Japanese Olympic spots in the Street competition?
We would like to think that even in street skateboarding; where subjectivity, freedom of expression, style, and flow are keys to competitive success; an ‘objective’ approach to understanding competition can still help these skaters achieve their competitive dreams. Performance in skateboarding is multifaceted (and largely unknown)(Diewald et al. 2024). Our pillars of success are only pieces of the puzzle. Which is why we love it so much! Yew!!! 🛹
Coming Next.....
What about those female Japan Olympic spots?
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