In a final stacked with talent, Australian Keegan Palmer successfully defended his men's skateboard park Olympic title — keeping gold out of the grasps of Americans Tate Carew and Tom Schaar.
Making their Olympic debuts, Schaar took home silver while Brazil's Augusto Akio nabbed bronze.
The three medalists emerged 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, the last two skaters to drop in, were able to stomp high-scoring runs. Palmer's run, which scored 93.11 points out of a possible 100, was enough to win him the Olympic gold medal.
Schaar's first run — a 90.11 — had him in third place at one point. But on Run 2, he followed up with an incredible 92.23-point run — alley-oop to lipslide, tailslide, 540 tailgrab, 360 stalefish, 540 melon, and kickflip Indy to fakie — which bumped him into second place.
Legendary skateboard pro Tony Hawk was seen with his mouth agape and Snoop Dogg was so amazed that he greeted Schaar with a hug as they awaited his score.
Meanwhile, a 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. After taking his third run, he wasn't sweating his score — instead, he immediately sprinted to his clubs and started juggling, seemingly unfazed as the commentators announced that he had moved into third place.
"Amazing, amazing. It was a pleasure, it was an honor," Akio said. "It wasn't easy, I had to trust in myself. I wouldn't be able to be that confident if there weren't friends, family, or spectators that were watching."
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 — another run that Hawk and Snoop Dogg both loved. His 91.17-point score was only enough to finish fifth, highlighting the immense talent of his competitors.
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.
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 falling in the very last seconds of the run to claim silver.
"It's pretty crazy, I mean I barely qualified [for the 2024 Paris Olympics], so I'm just trying to enjoy every moment right now," Schaar said of his silver medal.
Schaar narrowly earned a spot for the Paris Games after placing second at the final qualifying event, where he needed at least a second-place finish to claim the final quota spot on the U.S. men's park team from fellow American Jagger Eaton. Eaton won silver in the street event in Paris.
"Standing on the podium again with one of my closest friends is a great deal," Palmer, who — like Schaar — lives in Southern California, said. "I skate with Tom almost every single day. We've been talking about it for the last two-and-a-half months, since [the qualifying event in] Budapest and X Games. We were like, come on, one of us has to land that one."
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. Bottger landed a clean run that scored 86.95 points, but it wasn't enough to move forward in such stacked company.
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.
Sixteen-year-old Viktor Solmonde of Denmark was the youngest athlete while 49-year-old South African Dallas Oberholzer and 51-year-old Andy Macdonald of Great Britain led the field in age. 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."