With Asian skateboarders shining at the Tokyo Summer Olympics and Asian Games, we explore the rise of skateboarding in the region, especially focusing on Asian women in the male-dominated skateboarding world
With her straight black hair pulled neatly into a low ponytail, a shy smile and a plain, loose T-shirt hanging off her petite frame, Funa Nakayama came across as any other quiet teenager as she politely waited her turn at Hysan’s skateboarding rink when she and a few other Japanese skateboarders visited Hong Kong in November last year for Lee Gardens’ Skateboard Fest.
Once she stepped on to her skateboard, however, it was like she flipped a switch. Leaning her body forward, she propelled herself down the slope and flew off a platform with a dexterous command of her board and an air of self-assurance. Then, she popped her board, slid smoothly on a ledge before ending her ride with a powerful flip trick. This was only a warm-up. The unassuming 18-year-old is an Olympic medallist who won bronze at the inaugural women’s street skateboarding category in the Tokyo Summer Olympics in 2021. The achievement also propelled her to become the first Asian woman to appear on the cover of leading American skateboarding magazine Thrasher, in January 2023.
The athlete says: “2020 and 2021 were the ‘golden era’ of my career.” Not that it signals a plan to end her career: this year, Nakayama will be training hard for the Paris Olympics in July. But first, to qualify as a member of the Japanese team, she will need to stand out at rounds of national selections.
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Japan remains one of the strongest Asian teams in the sport, despite skateboarding only becoming popular a decade ago. It wormed its way into Japan’s subculture when American movies such as Kenny and Company (1976) and brands such as Converse and Swatch brought American skateboarders to Japan in the 1980s for demonstrations. The first wave of local skateboarders was a niche group of teens who aspired to the carefree Californian image and would practise in the city’s dim corners.
According to Warren Stuart, the head coach and head of the Skateboarding Subcommittee of the Hong Kong Federation of Roller Sports, skateboarding in Japan gradually gained popularity when more private and public skate parks were built. As of May 2021, the Tokyo-based NGO Japan Skate Park Association said that Japan had 243 public skate parks. Nakayama first became interested in the sport when the Nixs Sports Academy, the biggest skate park in Toyama, east Japan, opened in 2014. She was nine at the time and lived nearby with her family, so her father took her. Lying on the edge of the countryside, the plaza-style park, which takes up about 58,000 sq ft, has different bowl, pool, stage, ramp and street features that accommodate skateboarders from beginner to professional. When it was announced in 2017 that skateboarding would have its Olympic debut in the Summer Games in 2021 in Tokyo, it set off a nationwide wave of skateboarding mania, and parks like Nixs became even more popular.