Action Sports Athletes On How Olympics Postponement Shakes Up Their Lives

In early February, Team USA women’s BMX freestyle rider Hannah Roberts became the first American to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics. The 18-year-old was simply so dominant in 2019, winning all three world cup events prior to claiming the world championship in November, that no one could hope to catch her.

On Tuesday, however, Roberts and other top athletes around the world learned their Olympic dreams would be put on pause for another year; the International Olympic Committee announced in a statement the 2020 Summer Games would be postponed “to a date beyond 2020 but not later than summer 2021” due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The timing of the decision “makes sense,” says Brendan Dwyer, Ph.D., director of research and distance learning at the VCU Center for Sport Leadership. “The sooner they inform athletes and tourists, the easier it will be for them to adjust their training and travel plans respectively.”

Those adjustments are particularly hard to navigate, however, for athletes who have no prior experience in this pursuit.

Roberts and her fellow freestyle BMXers are going through this whole process for the first time, as the discipline is set to make its Olympic debut in Tokyo. So, too, are skateboarders. Now, action sports athletes who had been at the apex of their Olympic push are trying to make sense of what another year on the grind means for them.

“I have been trying to keep mentally focused on the goals leading up the the Olympics,” says Roberts. “Qualifying was easier to think about because my goal was just to do well at the next event, so I never put too much pressure on myself. But with the postponement, it definitely is stressful.”

Even before the inevitable postponement of this summer’s Games became reality, the pandemic was throwing Olympic hopefuls for a loop. Training regimens changed dramatically as skate parks and gyms closed their doors, either in the interest of social distancing or because the cities that housed them enacted shelter-in-place orders.

The Olympics are synonymous with peak physical performance and conditioning—but currently, many athletes cannot leave their houses.

“As for training, it’s definitely on pause,” says Jordyn Barratt, Team USA women’s park skateboarder. “All skate parks are closed, even private ones; all the beaches are closed, pretty much everything. It’s nuts.”

“Self-quarantine and closures have really affected where I can skate and train since I am not currently able to go to the public skate parks or private [places] I would typically go,” says Heimana Reynolds, Hawaii native and men’s park skater. The 21-year-old of Team USA is ranked No. 1 in the world in men’s park, but he hasn’t officially clinched a qualifying spot.

Now, his timeline for doing so becomes murkier.

The upcoming spring season was set to be a busy one for both BMX and skateboarding Olympic qualifiers, but those events have all been postponed, if not outright canceled. Dew Tour, originally scheduled for May 7 to 10 in Long Beach, California, was set to be the last U.S. skateboarding qualification event ahead of the 2020 Games. It has been postponed indefinitely.

All upcoming Olympic skateboarding qualifiers, including Raizin Ark League at Samukawa in Japan in April, the World Skate SLS World Championship of Street Skateboarding in London in mid-May and the World Skate World Championship of Park Skateboarding in Nanjing in late May, had been suspended.

Sabatino Aracu, president of the governing body of skateboarding, World Skate, announced in a statement Saturday the organization will soon draft a new qualification schedule once the IOC has finalized a new date for the Tokyo 2021 Games. Athlete input will be encouraged. “We absolutely want them involved,” Aracu said.

There are 80 spots available for skateboarders at the Tokyo Olympics, with 40 men and 40 women competing in park and street events. In each event, 20 athletes qualify through the following pathways: three from the World Championships, 16 from the world rankings, and Japan, as the host, with an automatic berth.

The UCI, the world governing body for cycling, had petitioned the IOC in mid-March to retroactively end the qualification period on March 3 for BMX freestyle as qualifying events like the UCI BMX Freestyle Park and Flatland World Cup in Hiroshima on April 3 and the UCI BMX Freestyle Park World Cup in China in May have been postponed or canceled. The aim was to “ensure sporting equity when it comes to the awarding of Olympic quotas,” the UCI said in a statement.

Now that the Olympics have been officially postponed, however, the UCI qualification process remains up in the air.

In a March 24 press release, the UCI said, “Our Federation is in close contact with the IOC to adjust is [sic] qualification procedure to the decisions taken concerning the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games.”

In BMX freestyle, 18 riders total, nine men and nine women, will compete in the Olympics, with spots for eight countries within each gender. The country with the most points in the UCI world rankings sends two riders to the Olympics. If points were frozen in place as of March 3, Australia would be in the lead, presumably sending Logan Martin and Brandon Loupos, who rank No. 1 and No. 2 in the rankings among Australians.

“This has not been confirmed by the IOC yet, but I believe in my heart Australia will be the dominant country and you can expect to see Logan and I on the Olympic podium,” says Loupos, 27, who lives in trains in America.

It’s trickier for athletes who are looking to be the only rider from their country represented. Take Kevin Peraza, who lives and trains in Arizona but is attempting to qualify for the Olympics for Team Mexico. Peraza, 25, is ranked 13th in the world, and Mexico ranks eighth. A rider like Peraza really needed the final qualification events of the season to make one last Olympic push.

But for now, all these athletes can do is try to stay in competitive shape and roll with the punches.

Known for his megawatt smile and unflappable optimism, Peraza is staying positive.

“Our health is always a priority,” Peraza says. “I know it is hard for a lot of other athletes that have only been focused and working for this moment. It is not only physical, but mentally hard on someone.”

An unexpected effect of self-isolation on Peraza’s training: it has reinforced why he picks up his bike every day.

“I will be training indoors, playing in my parking garage or trying to ride outdoors…searching for spots to ride and open up the mind to new ideas and find that inner joy of just simply riding my bicycle,” he says.

A few hundred miles away, Reynolds is feeling the same thing when he steps on his board.

“My thought process with all of the changes has just been to take it day by day,” Reynolds says. “It has been very hectic so I have just been focused on keeping my body strong, healthy and ready to compete at any time. I feel like this experience has actually brought me back to when I was a kid learning flat ground tricks in my garage and where I fell in love with skating, so that has actually been pretty cool.”

In North Carolina, Loupos and Roberts still have access to private training sessions at Daniel Dhers Action Sports Complex, an indoor park, along with other Olympic hopefuls including the park owner, Venezuela’s Dhers, and Team USA riders Justin Dowell, who won freestyle at the 2019 World Championship, and Perris Benegas.

“We’ve kept the training going but with a smaller session,” Loupos, an X Games gold medalist, says. “We’re trying not to let it affect us during training and focus on learning new tricks.”

Even if they can maintain their training in these uncertain weeks and months, however, the question of what their sponsors will do following the postponement of the Olympics is another looming unknown.

Unlike other pro athletes who benefit from guaranteed salaries and roster bonuses, action sports athletes depend largely on their endorsements, sponsorships and contest money to support themselves.

“Given that the postponement was just announced [Tuesday], things are still pretty fluid,” says Circe Wallace, executive vice president, Action Sports & Olympics at Wasserman.

“We would expect, given the unprecedented nature of things, we will need to work hard with partners to develop new ideas and opportunities collaboratively. We are in consistent contact with partners offering up suggestions and solutions for mutual support during this time. It affects every single one of us and our main focus has been on how we save lives and then how to weather this downtime productively.”

One of Barratt’s major sponsors, Toyota, has shown continued support as the skateboarder has encountered multiple roadblocks during her Olympic push. Not long after signing with Team USA, the 21-year-old tore her shoulder and had to have surgery, missing contests and taking a dip in the rankings.

“I’ve been really lucky to have some amazing sponsors and partnerships throughout this journey. Toyota has been amazing to me and it’s such a family dynamic,” Barratt says.

All the Team USA skateboarders and their representatives had a Zoom call with USA Skateboarding this week to discuss what comes next after Olympic postponement. “USA Skateboarding has been super educational and helpful during this time. There are still a lot of questions without answers right now, but for how quickly and unexpected this all happened they have been amazing,” Barratt says, adding that it was great to see everybody’s smiles on the Zoom call as skaters who frequently travel and compete together are now isolated in far-flung cities.

Though their road to Tokyo has gotten even more winding, these riders have the benefit of being young and healthy, and they are as determined as ever to see their goal through.

“Right now, doing well at the Olympics and putting down a good run is my only goal, so it’s everything to me,” says Roberts.

Skating in the Olympics would “mean the world to me,” says Reynolds. “To have skateboarding be recognized as an Olympic sport—a real sport—would bring the world’s recognition to what we do.”

“It’s definitely a hard pill to swallow, but it’s something we’ll just have to accept and start focusing our aim on 2021,” says Loupos. “Nothing is going to stop me from achieving this dream and whenever it happens, I’ll be ready.”