
Talk about saving the best for last! In the final event at the very first X Games Sydney, Monster Energy’s Nyjah Huston claimed the gold medal in the Men’s Skateboard Street event. Facing the world elite of competitive street skateboarding at the X Games debut on Australian soil, the 23-year-old from Laguna Beach, California, took home his ninth Skateboard Street gold medal.
Today’s final session saw 12 of the world’s best street skaters – including riders from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, and the United States – competing for the highest-scoring run with three attempts per rider. The concrete course at Spotless Stadium inside Sydney Olympic Park featured a broad variety of ledges and banks, plus an assortment of rails in different lengths and sizes. In other words, exactly the kind of obstacles Huston loves to skate.
The defending Street gold winner from July’s X Games Minneapolis came into the finals fully focused, posting a perfect run on his first attempt: backside Smith grind on the platform ledge into the bank, kickflip frontside boardslide the fun box rail, gap out kickflip to frontside Smith grind the bump to rail, backside 180 nosegrind the center rail to revert, backside kickflip 180 over the bump, backside big spin up the Euro gap and a highly technical nollie backside heelflip lipslide the big rail earned Huston a 94.33-point score for an early lead.