Usually at Semifinals phase on the World Skateboarding Tour- and this is true of Park as well as Street, which we are discussing here- there is an opportunity to report on the observation that any of the 16 semifinalists are in with a shot at progressing into finals, and from there making podium or even possibly winning outright.

However, so far in our Rome experience that hasn’t actually been the case- because what we are beginning to see is a solidification of pure pedigree at the top end of the leaderboard from round to round.
It is, as we mentioned in previous days, a reflection of the consistency of judging in part, but you can definitely see the top flight gel together and we are seeing less ‘who dey?’ break-ins to the final 8 as time goes on. 

Juni Kang, Wallace Gabriel and Jiyul Shin managed it in WST Kitakyushu, and Julian Agliardi has done it here in Rome- but the heats are bedding down to the point where there are only individual position swaps per round.

In Men’s semifinals on Saturday evening in Rome, it was only the two skaters (Mattias Dell Olio and  Wallace Gabriel) who ranked highest in their Heat 1 at the beginning who progressed into the finals, replacing the lowest-placed beginner from Heat 2 (Yukito Aoki) and Ginwoo Onodera. Besides that, the remaining six skaters from Heat 2 progressed directly into the finals in a collective demonstration of strength in depth.

Similarly, the two semifinals newcomers in Heat 1- Yakov Terrell and Juampi Mateos, both had performances to be proud of with full runs and textbook Best Tricks making up their scores, but could not place higher than 11th and 10th respectively, and will need to add to their arsenal in order to make finals going forwards. Sandwiched between them and the cut in 9th came Angelo Caro, who himself had a full performance which was still not enough to make finals. Above him in 8th was Juni Kang who had the worst Run score of the top 8 by a distance of some 10 points but managed to pull it back with the only 90+ Best Trick score of the Men’s event.

Women’s semifinals followed a very similar pattern: of the three skaters from Heat 1 to progress into Sunday’s final, two- China’s Chenxi Cui and Japan’s Mei Ozeki- started the day in positions 1 and 3 of that Heat respectively. Only resurgent American Paige Heyn bumped the trend by advancing from 15th at the start of semifinals to 7th position going into Sunday’s finals courtesy of a Switch Frontside Smithgrind which brought roars from the crowd and sparked the evening into life.

Losing out to those three advancing into the top 8 were Momiji Nishiya, who just had a straight-up nightmare of a semifinals, Gabi Mazetto and Ibuki Matsumoto who, like Yumeka Oda, Gabi and Jiyul Shin all suffered the curse of the ‘What Just Happened?’ landing when, having done the hard part, she succumbed to wheelbite upon landing during Best Trick.

Staying with luck, albeit the bad kind, Brazil’s Gabi Mazetto and Spain’s Daniela Terol were both bumped out of contention by last rolls of the dice from  Japan’s Yumeka Oda and Australian Chloe Covell, both of whom looked out of the game before doing minor magic acts with their last chances. Chloe, in particular, pulled an ace off the bottom of the deck with the last card of the night just as she did during the Kitakyushu finals. She really puts us-and herself- through the wringer like that.

A fast and furious Best Trick section full of thrills and spills in equal measure made for a super- exciting crescendo, and disappointing though it must be for Gabi and Daniela, the Spanish ripper could be forgiven for being privately relieved not to have to skate again after a painful slam on a Frontside 180 to Fakie Nosegrind ( a new move from her) which didn’t lock.

As with the men, on balance you’ve got to say the right eight are through to tomorrow.

Performance of the night: Korea’s Jiyul Shin who slipped under the radar by being next up after Brazilin superstar Rayssa Leal for a stealth stormer: two full Runs, and two best tricks over 80 points which puts her in pole position for Sunday.

Strength in depth.
We continue.