After taking residence silver within the males’s halfpipe on the final two Winter Olympics, Ayumu Hirano of Japan is a favourite heading into the finals and a snowboarder to observe within the race for gold.
Hirano, 23, is the chief of a dominant Japanese crew that features his youthful brother, Kaishu. All 4 athletes from Japan certified for the lads’s last on Friday.
Hirano disrupted the competitors panorama when he grew to become the primary individual to land a triple cork — three flips carried out on a rotation whereas grabbing the board — at a sanctioned occasion through the 2021 Dew Tour at Copper Mountain, Colo., after which once more on the X Video games in Aspen, Colo., this previous January. (He has but to land it and full a run.)
However Hirano, whose first title interprets to “stroll on a dream,” was a snowboarding prodigy lengthy earlier than that. He was launched to the game at round age 4 by his father, who owns a surf store and a skate park of their hometown, Murakami, on the west coast of Japan’s largest island, Honshu. His older brother Eiju was additionally an excessive sports activities athlete who competed in snowboarding occasions. “I wouldn’t be right here in the event that they didn’t begin skateboarding or snowboarding,” he stated of his father and his older brother.
When he was 12, Hirano sneaked in a journey between judged runs of the lads’s halfpipe competitors on the 2011 Burton U.S. Open in Vermont, the place he gained the junior division. As Burton Snowboard posted on Fb: “For those who poach the US Open Halfpipe Finals it’s essential observe the one unwritten rule. Go large. 12 12 months outdated Ayumu Hirano is effectively throughout the guidelines.”
When he was 14, Hirano gained silver on the Winter X Video games in Aspen, behind Shaun White, who was 26 on the time.
“After I’m in competitors, I don’t care about different riders,” Hirano advised Sports activities Illustrated in a December 2013 interview. “I give attention to myself. It doesn’t actually matter who else is using.”
His focus has paid off. Hirano, who spent a part of his early adolescence coaching in the USA and in Japan, has turn into among the best halfpipe riders on this planet, if not the very best, securing World Championship titles, X Sport gold medals and spots on the Olympic podium.
Beijing is Hirano’s second Olympic look in underneath a 12 months. Final summer time, he competed within the males’s skateboard park competitors on the Tokyo Video games, however he didn’t advance to the finals.