As a professional skateboarder, Jagger Eaton doesn’t fear much in his life. He’s been doing this on the biggest stage since the ripe old age of 11 when he became, at the time, the youngest to ever compete in the X Games. However, during his time at the Olympics, there was one thing he was afraid of. It was the 12-foot rail he was trying to land his best tricks on. Landing tricks on it was going to be the key to medaling this event, but while he was capturing everyone’s attention on TV because of how he jammed out to his music, that attention was drawing away from the fact that he was trying this on a busted ankle.
“[The] nosegrind I did on my third trick was a big deal for me.” Eaton said to UPROXX last week on his post-Olympics press tour through Red Bull. “That rail is really scary. That was by far the biggest rail I’ve ever done that trick on. And yeah, I mean, looking back I don’t know how my ankle survived…that was very unusual for me to see a rail that large. I know it’s the Olympic games. So I know how people get down. I know when they designed that course, they’re like ‘we’re going to make people send’ totally understand but I got to that rail. I’m like yeah, this thing is massive like it is no joke. It is a 12.”
Eaton’s nosegrind helped win him a bronze medal, but in retrospect, it may have been one of the most impressive tricks of the contest because of the circumstances. One month before this, Eaton broke his ankle competing in qualifiers in Rome. The results of that injury left him competing in Tokyo with fractures and torn ligaments in that same ankle, something that’s impossible to move completely out of your mind as you skate around one of the biggest street courses you’ve ever seen.
The 12-foot railing may have been the scariest part, but it also set a precedent for how the Olympics was going to be different from other skateboarding competitions. On a course that’s more compact, competitors like Eaton can gain some momentum, get a flow going, and string together a series of tricks to impress the judges watching them. However, the Olympics went the other direction. The course was huge which not only meant that the skaters had a plethora of options for how they wanted to skate it, but they were going to need a lot of speed to keep their momentum going. This was no problem for Eaton, minus the broken ankle.
“The Olympic course was huge but I love courses that are big.” Eaton said. “I feel like I’m a skater who skates really fast and that course was really good for that. So I mean, the only thing that kind of made the whole course stand out and really gnarly is that big section. I’ve been competing on a pretty bad ankle. I mean, I broke it in Rome only a month ago and so I still have two torn ligaments and two fractures in there. Oh my god, and skating that big section. Really tough for me.”
Despite these challenges, Eaton managed to push through and by doing so he became a name that is going to be remembered in skateboarding forever. He’s the first American to ever win an Olympic medal in skateboarding as a member of the first group that competed in Olympic skateboarding. It’s an honor that isn’t lost on Eaton, and he’s thrilled that the world got to see what skateboarding was all about.
“I feel like skateboarding deserves to be in the Olympics,” Eaton said. “I feel like people don’t really give skateboarding a lot of credit and don’t take the legitimacy of what we do and the athleticism it takes to do what we do and I feel like putting it on that Olympic platform gave an opportunity for people to see what we do.”
By putting skateboarding on the Olympic stage not only were Eaton and the rest of the competitors able to show the incredible skill skateboarding requires, but it did something else that ended up capturing the hearts of a lot of fans. Skateboarding is less about competing against others and more about competing against yourself.
“It’s all for the love of skateboarding, man, when you’re out there and you’re on your board and everything fades away.” Eaton said. “One of the biggest lessons that skateboarding teaches you is persistence and the ability to fall and get back up literally and I feel like it’s hard it’s you know, it’s hard to do that all the time but again, it’s like that’s where that passion and love shines because like I’ve been saying this a lot but it’s the truest form of how I feel about skateboarding. It’s the Olympic games, I was in the most pressure filled situation of my life. I put so much pressure on myself that contest. I trained for four years for that contest and at the same time in that final, I was in the most [high] pressure situation in my life, but I was having one of the greatest skate sessions in times of my life and I feel like skateboarding consistently reminds you that love and passion overrules. Any feeling that you have towards negativity in your sport, you know? If you love it, you really love it. You’ll go the distance with it.”
We saw this love for skateboarding throughout the street events for both the men’s and women’s events. When Yuto Horigome was running away with Gold he wasn’t met with stares of discontent. He was congratulated and praised. When two thirteen year olds, Momiji Nishiya, Rayssa Leal, and sixteen-year-old Funa Nakayama took the podium in the women’s event it was seen as an example of how skateboarding is for everyone. It’s a sport where the only expectation the athletes have with one another is the ability to skate. It’s highly competitive, but they want everyone to succeed and land tricks because that is what pushes the sport forward and pushes everyone to be better, go higher, and try harder tricks.
“The relationships between all my competitors — and you know all my competitors are my friends — that’s why they’re some of my best friend’s is because I love that my friends want to beat me in contests.” Eaton said. “Like I love that. Like if you don’t surround yourself with people that are better than you you’re going to become the medium of who you hang out with. Those are all my homies and it’s all love and I was so stoked for Yuto, that he took it in Japan and it was just, it was amazing to be a part of that moment.”
The Olympics, for all its faults, is at its best when the competitors are showing the level of respect for one another that Eaton is mentioning. Everyone wants to earn Gold and go back home as a hero to their country, but they want to do that for themselves above all else. This is why skateboarding was the perfect event. They already embody what the Olympics claim to represent and Jagger Eaton, fighting through ankle fractures to win Bronze, is an example of that. When Eaton gets out on a course the crowd disappears and the stage is gone. It’s just him, the course, his board, and the tricks he wants to nail. It’s the happiest place in the world for him. When he comes out of it, he’s holding a Bronze medal, the first ever skateboarding medalist in U.S. History.