Why do people enter the World Skateboarding Tour?
As the sole pathway to the Olympic Games, naturally you might expect that for some that is the main motivation- but let’s run some numbers here. For Men’s Street qualifiers today, we had 139 skateboarders entered. If we froze the selection process here and fast-forwarded to LA 2028, only the top 14 of those would make it (22 go forward to LA, but 8 pre-seeded Top Boys would already make up part of that quotient).

So 139 skateboarders (from 59 countries, a new Tour record) are theoretically competing for those 14 slots. Clearly, there are some youngsters who are entered for their first taste of WST experience with a view to becoming future Olympians (Thailand’s Firas Kirin being a top example- keep an eye out for that kid in the coming years)- but the vast majority are not.

That means: of the 8 Heats of 16 or 17 skateboarders per heat, less than one heat’s worth of skaters are in with a shot of going to the next Olympic Games. There are perhaps another 20 who could challenge them. So why do the other hundred enter if they don’t expect to make it to LA28?

For the experience itself, is the answer. In a skateboarding era where marketing budgets for travel have fallen off a cliff, the chance to travel the world and represent your country on the biggest participation platform in skateboarding today is its own reward. That’s why the WST continues to grow and flourish now and into the future, independently.

Julian Agliardi making his debut for the USA in Heat 3 was the first skater to break the 60 point ceiling, and it took until Heat 6 for Tijmen Overbeek to do likewise, overtaking him and breaking the 70 barrier himself.

Colombia’s Jose Santiago got badly hurt right after Tijmen took the lead, and we would all like to wish him both a speedy and full recovery here. It was a terrible experience for everybody.
With his injury and the unexpected rain delay (yes, during 34-degree heat we had a rain delay) right before it, momentum took time to return- and it was not until Cordano Russell put down his first run that someone had followed Tijmen in overleaping Julian Agliardi.

Yes, Juni Kang may have come through in the end to restore some order by being perfect, but don’t let the final standings fool you: this was an Open Qualifier like I can’t remember.
Besides Juni, almost nothing went like it was supposed to.
It was unexpected development after unexpected development all day long.
Bad luck seemed to hover for several people.
Normally bankable skaters just came within a hair’s breadth of going out at the first cut.
Felipe Gustavo and Ginwoo Onodera needed some last gasp heroics to just get into the last 32.

Jagger Eaton managed a 58.78 with a broken run- which shows it is possible to progress without a complete run at this stage- but since when does Jagger Eaton fall off a tre flip over a driveway?

France's Vincent Milou, who has two semifinals and a final under his belt here, is out before quarterfinals in Rome for the first time ever. 

Peru's Deivid Tuesta got absolutely smoked on his last trick, which also never happens.
One positive reversal of fortune was Israel's Yakov Terrell finally getting to deliver the run he has been trying to express forever, but that in itself was against the general drift of the day for almost everybody else.
(But it was superb- well done, Yakov)
And remember: this is a course that almost everybody is already familiar with and yet many, many people had a day to forget for reasons we are still yet to fathom.

So, we have a guy from the Vatican coming round to drive one of those street cleaning machines full of holy water over the place before tomorrow’s Women’s qualifiers.
Hopefully that will chase the What-The-You-Know-What's away from now.
Keep Jose Santiago in your upful thoughts, because he will need them on the long road back from that freak slam.
Skateboarding can be cruel sometimes.