X Games 2021 Research Update for July 12, 2021 Hey all! This is the final Update to feature athlete profiles. On Tuesday night, we’ll circulate the X Games 2021 Fact Collector as well as a preview of Wednesday’s BMX contests in Pat Casey’s backyard. Note: The X Games 2021 page on xdaily.espn.co is up and running. In addition to these Updates, you’ll find: Minneapolis 2019 recaps, recent contest results, rules-at-a-glance, etc. More content is added frequently, including on-site practice and comp recaps. If you don’t currently have access, simply apply at xdaily.espn.co. Email [email protected] with any questions. Thanks! Look Out Below! • This Update profiles Sky Brown, Dashawn Jordan and X Games BMX Dirt champ Colton Walker. Sky, age 13, is on the cusp of global superstardom, while Jordan aims for his first X Games gold. The 24-year-old Walker opens up about bouts of depression and anxiety and why he’s now in a better place. Say What? (All quotes provided directly to X Games researchers unless otherwise noted.) 13-year-old Sky Brown, on competing at both X Games and the Olympics: “The Great Britain team wasn’t so sure about [skating at X Games], and even my parents weren’t so sure about it. They said, ‘What if you get hurt?’ But I thought, I’m going to be skating anyway, right? What’s the difference? X Games is fun! It’s a good group of girls in the contest and it’s just as important to me as the Olympics. I didn’t want to miss it!” SKATEBOARD A New Teen Queen of Skate Sky Brown may have become a teenager just last week, but her philosophy and mature attitude toward competition sound advanced for her 13 years. “Winning medals isn’t what’s important to me,” she says. “Living my life is what’s important to me. Getting to be a kid, surfing, skateboarding, having fun, hanging out with my friends and my brother and my mom and dad.” Having fun is actually the main reason she’s coming to XG 2021 before heading to Tokyo, where she’ll be the youngest Olympic athlete ever to represent Great Britain and is coming in as the #3 ranked park skater in the world. “The Great Britain team wasn’t so sure about [skating at X Games], and even my parents weren’t so sure about it,” Sky says. “They said, ‘What if you get hurt?’ But I thought, ‘I’m going to be skating anyway, right? What’s the difference?’ X Games is fun! It’s a good group of girls in the contest and it’s just as important to me as the Olympics. I didn’t want to miss it!” Sky finished 5th as an 11-year-old rookie at XG Minneapolis 2019, where she became the first woman ever to land a frontside 540 in competition, soared a 360 over the center island feature and landed a kickflip to fakie on the large bank wall. She was 4’6 at the time and weighed just 66 pounds. She’s still small (5’0, 95 pounds), but she’s picked up a lot of power and speed and some big new tricks (including a McTwist) in the two years since. If she takes X Games gold, she’ll miss Brighton Zeuner’s mark as youngest X Games gold medalist (13 yrs., 1 day at XG Minneapolis 2017) by one week. But she could become the second-youngest gold medalist in X Games history, and she’d keep a great stat going: skaters younger than 21 have won every Women’s Skateboard Park comp at X Games. In fact, teenagers have won 5 of the 6 contests. Of the 9 skaters in the field at XG 2021, 7 are under the age of 21, and 6 of them are teenagers. Women’s SKB Park Gold Medalists Gold Medalist Age 2019 Minneapolis Misugu Okamoto 13 2018 Minneapolis Brighton Zeuner 14 2017 Minneapolis Brighton Zeuner 13 2016 Austin Kisa Nakamura 16 2013 Barcelona Lizzie Armanto 20 2003 Los Angeles Vanessa Torres 17 “I’m going to be excited if I win and I’m going to be excited if anybody else wins because they’re all my friends,” Sky says, artfully dodging gold medal pressure at every chance. “I’m just excited to be going back to X Games!” • DOB: July 7, 2008. Age: 13. She’s the youngest in the XG 2021 Women’s SKB Park field at 13 yrs., 1 week. The child of a Japanese mother and British father, the family has lived primarily in Huntington Beach, CA, since 2019. • 2021 is her second XG appearance. 5th in Women’s SKB Park at Minneapolis 2019. • First woman to land frontside 540 in competition, at XG Minneapolis 2019. Hers, first learned as a flyout trick from the bowl to the deck at her home skatepark, is slightly inverted, so it’s technically a rodeo flip. She has since learned frontside 720 flyouts to the deck and aims to try 720s in the bowl and on vert in the future. • Wants to do both frontside and backside 540s in her upcoming competition runs and may try both at XG 2021 if she’s feeling good. Several of her competitors -- including XG 2019 gold medalist Misugu Okamoto, her friend Sakura Yosozumi and XG 2021 rookie Jordan Santana -- have backside 540s. • Skate legends Christian Hosoi and Tony Hawk helped her learn proper McTwists (inverted backside 540s) in 2020. She first did them in the bowl at the Vans Skatepark and then on Tony’s private vert ramp. Tony also helped talk her through her first time jumping the gap at Elliot Sloan’s backyard big air ramp. • She’s #3 in the 2019-2021 World Skate rankings. Results highlights: 2nd at Dew Tour Des Moines (May 2021); 3rd at Oi Stu Open Rio de Janeiro (Nov. 2019); 3rd at World Skate Park World Championships São Paulo (Sept. 2019). • Great in interviews, and mainstream media has noticed: ESPN, NBC, CNN, The Guardian, BBC and more have covered her recently. “We’ve definitely had to put some walls up,” her dad, Stu Brown, told X Games Research. “Her main priority this summer is surfing, funny enough. So if I know the waves are going to be shit tomorrow, I’ll reach out to reporters who have been hitting us up and try to give them a little window with her. As soon as it gets to be too much, we pull away.” • Discovery+ has a new documentary, Reaching The Sky, on its subscription channel, though it’s not yet available in North America without jumping through some VPN geolocation hoops. So here’s a trailer. It includes footage from her terrible June 2020 crash at Tony Hawk’s vert ramp. She missed the gap transfer and fell from about 15 feet to flat. She was knocked unconscious, fractured her skull, broke her left arm and several fingers on her right hand and had other internal injuries including lacerations to her lungs. Incredibly, she skated just weeks later. • She’s now officially a Red Bull athlete (the brand only sponsors athletes age 13+), and she’s in the process of launching a new skateboard company, Monarch Project, in a 50-50 business partnership with Leticia Bufoni. Both skaters have shared images and videos of their new boards on social media. • “Leticia and I have had a close relationship for a long time, since I was 5 or 6, and she’s like a big sister. We’ll both be riding our new signature boards at X Games and the Olympics, and we’re about to announce a sick team. People are going to be shocked by some of the people on the team. Me and Leticia are the founders, but it’s not going to be a girls’ brand or a girls’ team: It’s going to be for everybody. We were inspired by a lot of our favorite pro skaters who started skateboard companies and put together their dream teams. We want to build something cool together.” • Instagram: @skybrown, 821,000 followers. Sky and her younger brother Ocean are also very active on YouTube: Sky & Ocean, 276,000 subscribers. Quest for Gold: Dashawn Jordan Nothing motivates quite like a silver medal. Two years ago, Dashawn Jordan felt like he had gold snatched right from his hands at XG Shanghai 2019. He led until the final run of the Men’s Skateboard Street Final. And then Nyjah Huston did as Nyjah Huston does, winning with the last pass of the contest for a walk-off gold. “It put that fire inside me, knowing I put together a run that the judges were stoked on, even after that buzzer-beater went the way it did,” Jordan says, reflecting on getting bumped to silver. “I’d skated X Games a few times before Shanghai, growing mentally and physically every year, so it felt good to see that progression rewarded out there on the course. For me, the silver medal is like fuel on the fire. It’s telling me, ‘You’re so close. Now go get it.’” Dashawn says the Shanghai event was also a reminder that it’s never only about medals. He’s been prioritizing mental health over the last two years, both for himself and as an advocate for mental health awareness. He says he’s been working on keeping everything in perspective. “X Games Shanghai was mad dope,” he says.