United States skateboard great Nyjah Huston said Thursday that he is trying to stay cool at the Paris Games after wilting under pressure in the sport’s Olympic debut three years ago.
Huston is one of skateboarding’s biggest names but he could only muster a seventh-placed finish in the street competition at the pandemic-postponed Tokyo Games.
The 29-year-old admitted that expectations on him were “hard to deal with” in skateboarding’s Olympic debut and he is “trying to feel less of that” in Paris.
“I’m trying to put less of that pressure on myself,” he said ahead of Saturday’s competition.
“I’m trying to go out there and just skate and have a good time and really be thankful to be in this moment again.”
Multiple world champion Huston heads into the Paris competition in good form, having won twice at the X Games last month.
But he will face stiff competition in particular from Japanese skaters, with Olympic champion Yuto Horigome, world champion Sora Shirai and 14-year-old prodigy Ginwoo Onodera all set to compete.
“It’s crazy to see how many Japanese skaters have come out of the woodwork in the past few years, and they’re all so good,” said Huston.
“There are at least three or four other dudes from Japan that you would think should have qualified, but Japan was so competitive and they could only take three.”
Huston said skating at the Tokyo Games was “interesting” but admitted that the absence of fans due to Covid restrictions affected his performance.
He said the course in Paris was “feeling great” and he is looking forward to skating in front of a crowd at the Place de la Concorde.
“As skaters we love to feed of that energy of the crowd, so it was kind of weird not to have that there,” he said of Tokyo.
“And I feel like that’s the thing that we’re all looking forward to most about this time in Paris.”