Peruvian skateboarder wins hearts after recovering from painful looking crash at Olympics

Skateboarding is making its debut at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo and with this event comes the time-honoured tradition of skateboard bails, an absolute staple of the sport.

Bails are what skateboarders call crashes and – if you’ve never seen skateboarding before – they can often be very unpredictable and have painful consequences.

Take for instance Peruvian skater Angelo Caro Narvaez who, after pulling off a nice looking lipslide on a rail during the street event, just happened to lean a bit too far back, causing the board to shoot out from underneath his feet. What happened next would make any man, woman or child on Earth wince in pain.

Narvaez looked to be in a brief bit of pain but soon got up and seemed to be ok. The crash, however, meant he was only awarded a 1.01 for his first run in the preliminary rounds but he still managed to make it to the final.

Despite being the lowest-ranked seeded skater in the final, the 21-year-old managed to recover and went on to finish fifth overall, outranking Nyjah Huston of the USA, one of the best skaters on the planet.

Needless to say, despite his accident, Narvaez managed to win a lot of people’s hearts and deserves to be better known than the guy who had THAT crash.

Incidentally, the first-ever skateboarding event at the Olympics was won by Japan’s Yuto Horigome. He was then followed by 13-year-old Momiji Nishiya, also of Japan, who took gold in the women’s street event.