PARIS — In a nail-biting finale, Encinitas skateboarder Jagger Eaton clinched a silver medal in the Olympic men’s street competition on July 29 in Paris, narrowly missing gold to Japan’s Yuto Horigome, who secured his second consecutive Olympic title with a stunning final trick.
In an outdoor venue on the Place de la Concorde in central Paris, Eaton, 23, a bronze medalist at the Tokyo Olympics, became the first Olympian from San Diego County to medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics. After landing a nollie-270-nose blunt on his penultimate attempt, Eaton was positioned to take home the gold.
“I thought I won,” Eaton said.
What a nail biting ender! Congrats to Jagger Eaton 🇺🇸 for getting the 🥈 at the Olympics Mens Street Final https://t.co/PE3lFVBhPU pic.twitter.com/YQ0XxCAnZS
— Daily Skate Clips (@SkateClipsOnX) July 29, 2024
But the Arizona native couldn’t have anticipated what came next from Horigome, a Tokyo native who had failed to land his last three tricks. In a masterstroke, Horigome delivered a knockout — a backside nollie 270 to a nose bluntside off a 10-stair rail — scoring a 97.08 that catapulted the defending gold medalist to another first-place finish.
Despite having one more attempt, Eaton, unable to repeat previously landed tricks, had already played his best hand. He finished with a 281.04 final score, missing the gold medal by just one-tenth of a point.
“Yuta is a savage. There’s no other way to put it. I could sit here and be so bummed, but I did the best I wanted to do, the best I could, and I gave 100 percent through this whole journey. It happens. I’m sitting here with a silver medal. We’ve got two USA on the podium. I’m fine. The level of competition was unbelievable. It was arguably the greatest final in skateboarding history.”
Fellow American and 12-time X Games gold medalist Nyjah Huston finished with a final score of 279.38 to earn bronze and his first Olympic medal after his surprising seventh-place finish in Tokyo four years earlier.
As a two-time medalist, Eaton has cemented his name among the world’s skateboarding crème de la crème following this week’s thrilling Olympic performance. And even though the street finale was a pressure-filled, anxiety-inducing affair, Eaton expressed his gratitude for being a part of an unforgettable competition.
“Not only were gnarly tricks done, but the energy between the crowd and so many things we were just feeding off it,” said Eaton. “That crowd, with everybody killing it, it felt like a bunch of friends having an amazing day at skateboarding. Yeah, there was a lot on the line. But it was just so fun I was grateful to be out there.”
In addition to Eaton, several young athletes from North County San Diego compete for the U.S. skateboarding team in Paris, including Encinitas skaters Bryce Wettstein and Tom Schaar and Oceanside’s Gavin Bottger and Ruby Lilley.
