Park, Men

The 7,000 capacity Ariake Urban Sports Park held the men’s park competition as the final skateboarding event of the 2000 Olympic Games. Qualification for the Games was severely affected by the COVID-19 epidemic and, when the 2020 and 2021 World Championships were both cancelled, entry to the Games relied exclusively on the world rankings. Those rankings were topped by American Heimana Reynolds, the 2019 World Champion, ahead of his compatriot Cory Juneau and a strong presence of Brazilians.

Each competitor had three 45 second runs, of which only the best score counted. The final was scored by the same format. The qualifying round went badly for the Americans. Of the three-strong team, only Juneau made it through to the final and he only scraped through as the final qualifier. Instead it was Brazil and Australia who dominated qualifying as they filled the top five positions.

The leader after the first run in the final was California-born Australian Keegan Palmer, who scored 94.04. Pedro Barros and Juneau scored in the mid-80s to place on the Olympic podium, but Palmer was never to be seriously threatened for the rest of the competition. With the gold medal already guaranteed the Aussie put together a third run which featured a kickflip Varial McTwist, an immensely technical trick that requires kickflipping the board while performing an inverted 540 spin.

In a sport that traditionally appeals to teenagers, it was notable that Rune Glifberg and Dallas Oberholzer competed at the age of 46.