Our photographic lookbacks from the perspective of a month always seem to reveal moments which may have passed by unobserved in the hubbub of World Championship dramas in a new destination, as was the case in Paraguay last month.

2026 has been a turbulent year on the World Skateboarding Tour, with people who we thought were established pacesetters suddenly floundering far down the leaderboard while breakthrough performances which were heralded as ushering in a new era turned out to be- if not a flash in the pan, then not a changing of the guard, either… or at least, not yet.

The one narrative thread which has stayed broadly on track has been Women’s Park, which at the top end of the leaderboard is quickly establishing itself as a series of duels between the ever-bankable Sky Brown who has seemingly never seen a podium she didn’t end up on, and Mizuho Hasegawa with whom she traded World Champion crowns in Paraguay.

Those two stayed on for hours during a rain delay right at the end of Semifinals and had to return to conclude their qualifying business first thing the next day instead in what was probably the biggest display of mental fortitude we witnessed throughout.

Ph: Mark Dillon

You get the impression that those two and their very contrasting styles will be one of the great rolling sub-battles of this entire Olympic cycle.

The finals appearance of Yi-Fan Lin and Hikari Satake, conversely, suggested a shake-up at the other end of the finalists order- and while Hikari’s fourth place was more than eight points off podium, nonetheless it should concern the more recent finalists the assurance with which she got there.

Ph: Mark Dillon

In Men’s Park the only finals newcomer was France’s Tom Martin, who absolutely battled to make it into that final 8 and fully committed to so doing. Like Guglielmo Marin in Rome last June, it was a moment of grasping destiny which is very inspiring to watch in what is arguably the most competitive Olympic skateboarding discipline right now.

Ph: Mark Dillon

Although many of us might have been expecting Issei Sakurai to pick up where he left off in his devastating Rome win early in the summer, it seemed that the sheer dimensions of the Paraguay park rather than curtail his excess instead catapulted it over the edge of control as experience told at the top end of Men’s finals.

As it was with Issei’s Italian romp not parlaying into a repeat performance in Paraguay, so neither did Chloe Covell’s Rome shutdown, where she had won by some considerable distance (and that is being diplomatic) last June.

Hitting her groove and flawless though she was throughout, Chloe could not hold off the only other story of predictable consistency right across the World Skateboarding Tour: Yumeka Oda’s quiet, unshowy return to her magnificent best- a great second place in Kitakyushu at the end of 2025 set up the same result again in Rome last June before regaining her 2023 World Champion crown in Paraguay.

Ph: Mark Dillon

And that brings us to Men’s Street: although it will be remembered primarily as Ginwoo versus Juni (think: Rodney Versus Daewon for the modern contest era) and of course Ginwoo’s last-gasp, come from behind victory, it will also be remembered for the biggest Best Trick collapse since OQS Shanghai, with only 3 tricks total being landed out of 24 attempts.

A measurement of the quantum leaps in difficulty being undertaken there can be no doubt, it also seemed to herald the end of the age of comparative safety tricks. Everybody was shooting for the 90’s with each attempt, and as a result all the non-podium places in a World Championship came down to Run scores alone, which has never happened.

Ph: Mark Dillon

It also meant that Taiga Nagai snuck up from 5th to bronze medal in his first-ever WST finals in a situation where former WST winners Kairi Netsuke and Toa Sasaki completed neither a full Run or Best Trick between them- which would have got you laughed out of the shuttle bus if you had called it as a likely outcome that morning.

Ph: Mark Dillon

Order and chaos at both ends of the top tables in Paraguay- but not necessarily involving the usual suspects- as the World Skateboarding Tour continues its wildly unpredictable journey through 2026.

Ph: Mark Dillon

Enjoy our snapshots from a brand new phase of this shared adventure, seasoned by a month’s passage of time.

Photos: Park/ Bryce Kanights & Street/ Raisa Abal (unless otherwise stated).