Japan's Ayumu Hirano, two-time Olympic halfpipe snowboarding silver medalist, competed in the prelims of the men's park skateboarding contest in Tokyo on Thursday, finishing 14th.
The 22-year-old Hirano, Shaun White's primary rival in Olympic snowboarding, qualified for the Tokyo Games in May and was the only Japanese man in the park skateboarding field. His highest run score in prelims was 62.03, but it took a 73.00 to make the final.
Hirano won back-to-back silver medals on the halfpipe at the 2014 and 2018 Olympics.
More than 100 athletes have competed for both the Summer and Winter Games. Since 2000, American Lauryn Williams is the only one to win medals in both, doing so in track and field and bobsled.
At these Olympics, other high-profile Summer/Winter Games athletes include baseball player and speed skater Eddy Alvarez, who served as the United States' male flagbearer in the Opening Ceremony, and the "shirtless Tongan" flagbearer Pita Taufatofua. By competing in the men's 80+kg tournament in taekwondo, Taufatofua, who competed in cross-country skiing in 2018, became the first person to compete in three straight Olympic Games (summer and winter) since the introduction of the Winter Olympics in 1924.
White — a five-time X Games medalist in vert skateboarding — also considered competing as a skateboarder in Tokyo, but ended efforts to qualify in March 2020 in order to preserve himself for a potential 2022 Olympic campaign. He made it to the Games as a spectator nonetheless and got to take the park course for a spin.
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Japanese skateboarders dominated the first three skateboarding disciplines in Tokyo. Yuto Horigome took the gold in men's street, Momiji Nishiya and Funa Nakayama won gold and bronze in women's street, and Sokura Yosozumi and Cocona Hiraki went 1-2 in women's park.
