Tag Archives: Place de la Concorde

José Torres Gil Records Stunning Initial Score to Claim Gold in Men’s BMX Park at 2024 Paris Games

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2024 Paris GamesJosé Torres Gil is riding high!

The Argentine rider wowed his way to a gold medal with a stunning initial score of 94.82 at the 20024 Paris Games in the Men’s BMX Park final on Wednesday.

José Torres GilWith the victor, Torres Gil not only claimed Argentina’s first medal of the 2024 Summer Games, he also won his country’s first individual gold medal in a cycling discipline.

“I couldn’t understand it, total craziness, it brought tears to my eyes,” was how Torres Gil explained hearing that he would be crowned Olympic champion at the Place de la Concorde, the temporary home of the Urban Sports Park.

José Torres GilGreat Britain’s Keiran Reilly took silver after packing trick after trick into his second run, hauling himself above France’s Anthony Jeanjean with the final act of the competition. As he threw his bike across the boarded floor and dropped to his knees in exhaustion, you knew he had given all he could.

“It was probably the best final that we’ve ever seen on the international stage,” said Jeanjean, whose score of 93.76 was enough to win gold at the 2020 Tokyo Games three years ago.

A rider is scored out of 100 based on the best of their two 60-second runs in an Olympic final, this the second time the freestyle format has appeared at the Olympic Games, and points are awarded based on several criteria, including the difficulty, variety, creativity and execution of their tricks.

Torres Gil’s gold medal was the first for a South American nation at these Games and, in his first Olympics, he added to the Pan American Games title he won last year.

He was unfancied going into the final having qualified in seventh place with an average score of 86.66. That was behind Reilly, who qualified first, and the American duo of Marcus Christopher and Justin Dowell in second and fourth.

Martin occupied the third qualifying spot and Jeanjean the fifth, but it was Torres Gil who rose to the occasion with a high-scoring first run, which would stand as the benchmark for most of the competition.

Perhaps, though, that is part and parcel of the Olympics: where the unexpected can happen and the unfancied can become eternal.

“The level was extraordinary,” he said in his press conference. “The best athletes of the planet were here in Paris. I competed against the best of the world and I felt incredible; I feel part of this incredible universe.”

Brazil’s Rayssa Leal Claims Bronze in Women’s Street Skateboarding at 2024 Paris Games

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2024 Paris GamesRayssa Leal has skated her way to another Olympic medal…

The 16-year-old Brazilian professional skateboarder, considered one of the sport’s brightest stars, claimed a bronze medal at the 2024 Paris Games in the women’s street skateboarding competition.

Rayssa LealWhile it may have been a bronze, it was celebrated in the stands like it was a gold.

When Leal stuck her all-important final trick of the women’s street skateboarding final at the 2024 Summer Olympics, a deafening roar went up from the many green-and-gold-clad fans watching on.

In that moment, Leal – an undeniably popular figure back home in Brazil with huge support in Paris to prove it – jumped from fifth to third, capitalizing on her final hope of securing a second Olympic medal.

Rayssa LealOut in front were the Japanese duo of Coco Yoshizawa, who took gold thanks to a massive score on her fourth trick, and Liz Akama, who’d led for much of the competition.

Just as with this event in Tokyo, the entire podium was made up of teenagers: Yoshizawa is 14, Kama 15, and Leal – who became Brazil’s youngest ever Olympic medalist when she won silver three years ago – 16.

Rayssa LealAlthough she wasn’t able to upgrade her silver from the 2020 Tokyo Games, Leal, along with her huge number of supporters, would have been equally joyous and relieved to win bronze in dramatic fashion, scoring 88.83 with her final act of the competition to climb ahead of China’s Cui Chenxi on the leaderboard.

“It was like a gold medal because … she had to make it,” Brazilian fan Michelle Arruda, who bought tickets for the women’s street skateboarding to watch Leal a year ago, told CNN Sport. “It was a lot of emotion and felt like the Olympic spirit – you have to be here to understand what it is.

“You get so nervous, it’s like you are there with them … We were literally praying, holding hands. It was like: ‘She’s going to make it.’ I don’t know how, but I really believed that she was going to make it.”

Leal first catapulted to fame when a video of her skateboarding aged seven, dressed in a blue fairy princess costume, went viral. It was shared by skateboarding icon Tony Hawk, who tipped his hat to the “fairytale heelflip.”

Known as the fadinha do skate – Portuguese for “skate fairy” – from then on, Leal’s popularity has continued to grow. She has acquired a number of sponsors, including Nike and Monster Energy, and boasts 7 million followers on Instagram, all while her skateboarding has continued to take an upward trajectory.

The highlight of her performance at Paris’ Urban Park, a temporary facility erected on the Place de la Concorde, was scoring 92.88 for the first of her two successful tricks – the second-highest score of the final.

“When I was very young, I dreamed of becoming a skateboard athlete,” Leal told reporters. “And here I am, with a second Olympic medal from the Games. Once again, thanks God I won a medal. I’m very happy to be here.”