Japan's Horigome retains Olympic men's street skateboarding title / Photo: Odd ANDERSEN - AFP
Japan's Horigome retains Olympic men's street skateboarding title
Japan's Yuto Horigome landed the highest-scoring trick of the men's street skateboarding competition in Monday's final round to retain his Olympic crown.
He edged out American Jagger Eaton by 0.1 points, with another US skateboarder, Nyjah Huston, taking bronze.
The day after 14-year-old compatriot Coco Yoshizawa won gold in an all-teenage women's final, the 25-year-old Horigome continued Japanese domination in a final where the top six finishers were all 22 or older.
Horigome lay fourth after the two runs that opened the final. He leapt up the standings with a big score in the first of his five tricks, but fell on the next three.
That allowed Huston to take the lead.
In the penultimate round Tokyo bronze medallist Eaton just stayed on his board on landing as he hit what was at that point the biggest score of the afternoon with a 95.25 to go into gold-medal position.
But Horigome rose to the challenge with a 97.08 for a total of 281.14 points.
Eaton totalled 281.04, while Huston edged out Sora Shirai of Japan for bronze.
Ginwoo Onodera, the 14-year-old Japanese skater, was eliminated in the preliminary round after failing to score on four of his five tricks.
N.Macleod--EWJ
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