Jagger Eaton on quitting park skateboarding: “It was just the right move”
Eaton has always taken a tremendous amount of pride skating both street and park at an elite level. He believes no one, not anytime soon, will be able to replicate what he has achieved as a two-way skater, staying in the top 10 in both disciplines through two Olympic cycles and netting two medals.
While last year’s injury surely had something to do with it, he has made the decision to forego park and focus on street for LA because that is how badly he wants to top the podium at his home Games in 2028.
If Eaton wanted to continue the juggling act, he probably could. But it just made too much sense for him to pool his resources into trying to win the elusive street gold, after bronze at Tokyo 2020 and the narrowest of silvers at Paris 2024 to Japan’s Horigome Yuto, who defended his Olympic title in dramatic fashion by overtaking Eaton on his final trick.
Eaton tips his hat to Horigome for coming through in the clutch – “When Yuto Yutos? Yeah, it’s hard” – but also admits he made a tactical error in his build-up to the Paris Games.
“The only reason why Yuto was able to pull that gold is because he did that trick in a prior contest beforehand,” Eaton said, dissecting the men’s street final. “So they knew how to judge it.
“That trick that I did in the Olympic Games has never been judged before. They didn’t know how to judge it and they had 10 minutes, in the finals at the Olympic Games, under pressure with millions of people watching to try to decide what this trick scores. That’s a lot of pressure on anybody.
“That’s just a pressure-filled moment for people in the crowd, for my family, for me, for the judges. It’s just a pressure filled situation. You don’t want to put people in that situation under that amount of pressure. You don’t.
“The Olympic Games, it’s a whole different contest. It’s like a spectacle. You want to go in there and be a trick-hitting machine without leaving anything behind.
“Yuto being able to win (the Olympic Qualifier Series in Budapest), make it on that Japanese team and then win was the perfect cycle. That’s the way you should always run a contest if you can – you win the contest before the main one so that you know exactly where the judge’s heads are at.
“And that’s the one thing I messed up.”
Eaton admits letting go of park was anything but an easy choice. Yet it is one he has had to make, to better his chances of topping the podium in two years’s time.
Because Eaton is convinced that’s the kind of commitment it takes.
“It was a very difficult decision because I still love it. I love park and I love skateboarding to death.
“But again, where my body’s at – I am 25, I’ve been competing pro now since I was 17. I’ve taken a lot of beating and also for a strategy, for the sake of getting a gold medal – like let’s just do one.
“I mean I got two medals doing both. Let’s see what happens when I just do one discipline. Let’s see just that. And so that’s what me and my coach decided and it’s going to be the right move.
“I kind of have to perceive injuries like they are a blessing in disguise, turn negatives into positives as much as I can, because these guys aren’t slowing down. And if I start in my head making excuses, they’re going to run right past me.
“So I gotta make sure that whatever negative happens, I turn into a positive. And again, I talked to all my team, I talked to my sponsors, I talked to my coach and it was just the right move.
“You know, what I did in skateboarding will be cemented in there forever and I’m grateful for that, and making both teams was the goal but now it’s different.
“Now the whole goal is to win a gold medal for the United States.”