So if the theme for yesterday’s sermon was (*checks notes) returns and rising performances, then here we should talk about consistency- but perhaps not in the sense you might initially suspect.

If you have followed the general drift of our editorial output over the last few years with particular regards to the Olympic qualification process and the significance of the 18-month rolling results window which shapes the World Skateboarding Ranking, you will have heard the point made often about increments.

An increment is the tiny difference, the tiny improvement, consistently over time.

Let’s take an imaginary fast-forward through the entire Road To LA28 which begins here in Rome to the night before the Big Show begins in Los Angeles two summers from now.

It seems certain that one of the major deciding factors in who made the cut and who did not will come down to the increments all the way between now and then, all added up.

For sure, there will be some late-cycle hero runs by big names with the force of will to try and jam their name in there come what may, but the skateboarders who arrive their comfortably will be those who stacked enough solid-but-not-historic performances to remain in those pre-seeded slots; who didn’t have to skate in Heat 2 with their sponsors watching online; who never dropped far enough out of contention to need the hero surge in the first place. 

The reason why this observation is made again goes back to the foundational principle of the World Skateboarding Tour: this is a pathway which anybody can win if they have the talent and application to knuckle down and deliver with an element of consistency.

The way in which you see that reflected is in the fact that in Women’s semifinals tomorrow, only Cora Wilton and newcomer Ria Tanno have traded places north of the position 16 red line with semifinal regulars Nanami Onishi and Funa Nakayama; the other 14 women in semifinals are all people who you would expect to be there through consistency. 

To be sure, Rayssa Leal and Ibuki Matsumoto both needed their second runs to lock their places in, but lock them they did.

Two quick points: you have no idea just how much of a celebrity Rayssa Leal is in Brazil now until you see the YouTube livechat suddenly quadruple in size when her heat arrives. Heavy that crown must hang; and secondly, Ibuki’s last-run-of-the-whole-day stormer bumped Thailand’s Vareeraya Sukasem out of contention when she had been looking good for semis all afternoon. That must have been hard to take, but she can take comfort from the fact she is knocking on the door.

Flip the coin over for Men’s, and we have to observe that big names Jagger Eaton, Matt Berger, Shane O’Neill, Felipe Gustavo, Jhancarlos Gonzalez and Cordano Russell all found themselves unable to make it into the last 16 here in Rome today.

For Jagger particularly that is an uncharacteristic twice in a row that it has proven to be the case. He will, one might assume, use that fact to produce something blistering further along the road- but for tonight let’s sign off by bigging up Argentina’s Juampi Mateos and Israel’s Yakov Terrell, who both found their groove to proceed in this most unforgiving of environments- where nothing is either asked for, or given.

Increments: it’s all about those increments- and consistency is how you bank them on the long Road To LA28.

Semifinals it is, then.