Thursday brought us to the longest day of them all, one in which fully 152 skateboarders threw down all they had for their chance to progress to tomorrow's quarterfinals. As with the women yesterday, the heats ran on a format of two 45-second runs, the better of which counted towards their final score. From there, it is a question of simple mathematics - the top 27 proceed to the next round, and everybody else can go get a gelato and visit some architecture (about which more later).

Ph: Mark Dillon

While it is doubtless cruel to have 125 sets of hopes and dreams dashed in the course of a day, it is also democratic in the sense that Jamie Foy has to go up against hungry Japanese unknowns and skaters from, say, Uganda or Ukraine for whom being in the same heat as their heroes is a lifetime achievement in and of itself.

Ph: Mark Dillon

With early temperatures mercifully kept at bay by some low-level cloud haze, all of these hundred-and-fifty-plus skateboarders from 58 different nations, whatever their background and regardless of their sponsorship status, went at it to establish who would join the 5 pre-seeded skaters (Nyjah Huston, Gustavo Ribeiro, Ginwoo Onodera, Aurelien Giraud and Kelvin Hoefler ) who will join them tomorrow - at which point every daily cut between now and Sunday's final will be a halving.

Ph: Mark Dillon

Merciless it most certainly is, but such is the nature of the Olympic journey: no favourites, no soft pathways, show up and bust or get a gelato and watch with the rest of us. The top 27 male qualifiers from World Street Skateboarding Rome 2023 are below; join us tomorrow for quarterfinals from a scorching Italian capital!