“Of course thoughts like that come through my mind,” he said. “All you can do is try to pick yourself up and land the next one.”There would be no Hollywood ending for Huston, no golden moment at the Place de la Concorde. But the way he kept glancing at the bronze medal around his neck, rubbing it between his fingers, suggested he was fine with the way things ended.
There were a few highlight-reel moments, no massive fails, on the way to the podium. It helped that, by all accounts, Monday’s competition ranked among the greatest in the sport’s history.
The defending Olympic champion, Yuto Horigome of Japan, needed a massive 270 nollie bluntside on his final attempt to leapfrog over Huston and silver medalist Eaton.
“Nyjah and Jagger were keeping such good scores,” Horigome said through a translator. “I stopped focusing on the medal and just tried the best trick I could.”
Both Americans led at some point during the competition and had one more shot at gold, but they missed on their last attempts. Eaton, who upgraded from bronze three years ago, was asked about the roller-coaster final.
“The roller coaster was that I thought I won,” he said. “Then I got off the ride.”
Huston had similarly mixed emotions about surrendering an early lead but, given the challenges he faced this time around, it was hard to be too upset.His rise to stardom began more than two decades ago. Growing up at his family’s skate park in Davis, Calif., Huston signed his first endorsement contract at age 7 and won his first big amateur contest a few years later.
His pro career took off with the debut of Street League Skateboarding in 2010. He won the inaugural season, paving the way to those world championships and a record 23 overall skating medals at the X Games.
