Today’s Women’s Open Qualifiers in Rome could be characterised by the theme of returns.

If there is one aspect of female skateboarding which has benefited from the Olympic era it has been the new emphasis on conditioning, and although there were higher- scoring performances this afternoon in Rome the two standouts in terms of bouncing back from earlier injuries would have to be Colombia’s Jazmin Alvarez and Brazil’s Gabi Mazetto.

It would be impossible to prize them apart for the purposes of comparison, so let’s praise them individually here: Gabi may be riding blank boards but she is looking crisper than ever.
Her comeback in São Paulo, Brazil back in March may not have been her best result on the World Skateboarding Tour, but as a declaration of intent it certainly was emphatic- and on the basis of her appearance here in Rome, she has not taken a day off skating since then.
As a mother and leader of the Brazilian mission here she has nothing to prove, but she is skating like someone who has anyway, and her strength and power will carry her far against younger women who’s power bars were depleting visibly in withering Roman midday heat this afternoon.

Jazmin Alvarez we have already devoted many digital column inches to and if you follow her on social media you may already be aware of the Herculean effort she has put into making it back onto the Tour since exiting the Paris Olympic Games in heartbreak back in the summer of 2024.

I hope she won’t mind me saying this but it was an observation made multiple times in the media house during the past few days: she looks even better now than before, somehow. 

She sailed through qualification with a first run score 10 points clear of the final cut off score and, having first tentatively dipped her toes back in the WST waters in Brazil back in March, it looks like we have our old Jaz back in the game.

Staying with returns, don’t be surprised if Momiji Nishiya reminds everyone why she is a six-time finalist on the WST this weekend. Although it was unusual to see her need to skate the Open Qualification this time around, she is clearly a top-flight skateboarder and had two runs each twenty points clear of the danger zone. 

The fact that she is not currently part of that Chloe/ Rayssa/ Ibuki “who’s best” conversation might actually work in her favour here- she is cruising, currently, and I will go ahead and tip her for the finals already, based on how poised she seems... barring a lightning strike, or similar.

OK: returns to form are all well and good, but let’s now talk about improved performances.

Spain’s Natalia Munoz showed how hard she has been working with two solid Runs under her belt, today- and was leading for most of the afternoon. 
With four semifinals to her name and a Tour-best 12th place in Shanghai to aim for, this could be her time to make a move. Fingers crossed for her, there.

Australia’s 12-year-old Cora Wilton similarly made light work of qualification, and this on a course which is new to her. On only her third Tour stop she qualified in fifth with a mid-60’s score and if she can repeat or improve on that performance on Friday she will continue on her upward curve of results beyond a previous-best 25th in Brazil.

The two standout performances of today, however, were Korea’s Jiyul Shin who rocked WST Kitakyushu with a 4th place debut and is a future winner on the Tour one would imagine based on just how good she is. A prodigious talent, she only needs that slip-up from the top flight and she will power through. 

Qualifying in first, though, was Japan’s Mei Ozeki who, remarkably, is only the 8th highest-ranked member of the Japanese team. With that said, the Japanese coaching squad are superb at finding individual skater’s strengths and then building performances around them. She got 10th here last year, which is only two spots off a finals berth, and she will be fizzing off the back of ending today in pole position. 

Let’s not create any expectation for a 13-year-old, but recognise that as performances go today was already super-impressive for her. Tomorrow the big beasts of pre-seeding enter the fray so today will not be a template for how things play out from here but nonetheless between strong returns and people seizing their moment, I will go out on a limb and predict that the lower eight positions of Saturday’s 16-woman semifinals will contain some new names, and we may even see some new finalists come Sunday. 

Incoming!