The tricks were that big, the drama that deep. A gold medal that Eaton thought he had won by landing a trick that had never been completed in competition was gone in an instant when Japan’s Yuto Horigome dropped a bombshell of a leap on his board, spinning off a railing, to send Eaton to silver. And yet the day had been so magnificent, with fellow American Nyjah Huston winning bronze, that Eaton stood in the fading sunlight smiling wide.
Competing at the Olympics “just brings the best out in us,” he said.
When skateboarding first came to the Olympics at the Tokyo Games, most of the world’s top skaters did not embrace the development, viewing the Games as the ultimate mainstream contest and antithetical to their cultural ethos as outsiders. Eaton saw the possibilities first. As the child of gymnastics coaches and from a family of gymnasts, he knew the breadth of the Olympics audience makes the Games different from anything else in sports.
While X Games stars slowly dragged their feet to the Games, Eaton leaped, embracing it fully. In many ways, he is like snowboarder Shaun White, who capitalized on the Olympics to build an empire of medals and endorsements a generation before. Eaton, who lives and trains not far from White in San Diego, sees White as something of a mentor.
Eaton prepared hard for these Games, vowing to compete in both street and park events. He almost made it happen, too, losing his chance at park in the last of a series of qualifiers the International Olympic Committee created to inspire more interest in younger fans.
“I’m just fortunate to have a family that loved the Olympic Games, and when it got involved in skateboarding, it felt like my destiny because that was all I watched every summer,” he said while standing in a corner of the plaza, not far from the park where the balloon with the Olympic flame is moored. “I was much more mentally equipped for what the Olympic Games entails because of how much pressure there was and how much my family understood it.”
Eaton won bronze in Tokyo while Huston, who might be street skating’s biggest star ever with six world championships, 12 X Games gold medals, close to 200 tattoos and a taste for expensive cars, did not. While Eaton thrived in Tokyo, Huston looked perplexed, struggling to seventh.
On Monday, he said he could never adapt to the mix of a brighter spotlight and a lack of fans during a pandemic Games. What was supposed to be the biggest competition of his life felt like a practice day with the empty stands.
This time, the eight skaters in Monday’s final seemed to grasp what Eaton had been saying all these years. Huston moved through his runs and tricks with ease. Lesser-known skaters such as Canada’s Cordano Russell took big chances and scored. But this day was about Eaton and Huston.
Back and forth they went, each matching the other. For a time, Eaton led, then Huston pulled ahead only to fall behind. On his fourth of five trick tries, Eaton completed a nollie 270 switch backside noseblunt on the railing, wobbling for a moment as he landed on his rolling board but staying upright. He threw his hands in the air. Huston shook his head, then walked toward Eaton to shake his opponent’s hand.
Then, minutes later, Horigome passed them both.
“The roller coaster was that I thought I had won, then I got off the ride,” Eaton said.
When it came time to get the medals, Eaton accepted his silver, smiling and waving, pointing toward family in the stands. Huston, 29, looked at his bronze almost with wonder, turning it in his hands, gazing at the engraving. The skater who has won more skateboarding gold medals than he could know what to do with was transfixed by Olympic bronze.
“It’s sick to look at,” he said. “I’ve gotten a ton of X Games gold medals before, but none of them look like this or feel like this.”
He was still wearing his medal, and he lifted it again in the early-evening light.
“The main part that’s different is us representing our country,” he said. “To see how hyped all the crowd is and the fans for the USA obviously but also the other countries, that’s really a special thing and something that’s new to us as skateboarders but something that’s most special about this experience.”
A few minutes earlier, as the stadium cleared, Eaton’s father, Geoff, stood near his seat in the stands, watching his son and Huston. Geoff Eaton has always loved skateboarding, and when his sons were young, he pushed them toward the skatepark and away from gymnastics. Something about the camaraderie of skateboarding made him think that was best for his kids.
“I don’t think many people in the skateboarding community understood what it means to be on the world stage representing their country,” he said. “But they will.”
On Monday, in what his son called the greatest street skateboarding final anywhere, it seemed that maybe they already did.
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