Paris 2024 Olympics: Nyjah Huston staying true to himself
Before the medals and the titles, before the fame and notoriety, before media scrutiny and the spotlight of the Olympic Games, there were the streets.
A labyrinthine world made up of brutal surfaces, concrete ledges and twisted metal frames smattered with vacant stairs to nowhere.
It’s a sight much of the world would dismiss for its banality, but to a skateboarder like Nyjah Huston, it represents an endless world of possibility.
Sitting for an interview under the speckled light of the Hungarian sun 38 days out from Paris 2024, such is the calibre of the athlete in Huston it seems only natural that the conversation should turn to the question of greatness as the Games approach.
A professional from age 11, there is little skate terrain that Huston hasn’t conquered. With 15 X Games gold medals, six world titles and three ESPY Awards, the U.S. skater’s already epic career is stuffed full of achievements. If anyone should get to consult on the subject, Huston would be among the first in line but it’s not towards victories that he first turns.
It’s to the streets.
“To me, the definition of greatness is being a true skateboarder. Someone who is in it for the love; someone who is obviously a street skateboarder and takes the time to go out and film these video parts and take the falls and donate the blood to the streets," Huston says thoughtfully.
“That's really what street skateboarding came from. And I hope that's what it's going to be forever - and forever be the most important thing.
“I think being a skateboarder who has that balance of being able to skate the streets and also skates the contests, I think it's great and definitely helps out with leaving that legacy. But when it comes down to it, the things that I'm most proud of myself for and the things that I think most people will remember me as, is the video parts we put out and the tricks we do on the streets.”
"It's crazy to see it go in that direction"
While it might seem surprising that Huston’s skateboarding core lies away from the contest circuit, particularly given the reputation it has brought him, it’s clear as he speaks he respects what it brings to his skating.
To produce the video parts with ferocity and intensity Huston must be at his very best when he hits the road. Competitions, for all their restraints relative to the streets, pit the best skaters against one another handing the U.S. star another reason to keep raising his standard. And with the current rate of progression in skateboarding across disciplines and genders, there’s never been a more exciting time to be a part of thrills and spills.
“I'm thankful for skating contests because it really helps me stay and become a good skateboarder, a better skateboarder, and I want to keep doing it for as long as possible, I really do,” Huston says. “When I see the progression of skateboarding it makes me think how far is it going to go at such a fast pace, you know? What's it going to look like in five years, 10 years or like, 50 years? What are people going to be doing? It's wild.
“I feel like there's been like a few stages to contest skating. You had all the contests that happened up until Street League started, and then Street League really started to push that progression; you saw gnarlier tricks go down, more consistency, bigger obstacles. And then that next stage was really the whole Olympic side of things. I feel like as soon as skaters heard that it was going to be in there, everyone started practising harder, training harder, taking care of their bodies more.
"And it's crazy. It's crazy to see it go in that direction because think back, let's say five to 10 years ago, skaters weren't even working out or training. And now you see everyone posting videos in the gym,” Huston says before adding a second time, “it's wild”.
"Keeping the body up to shape takes a lot of work"
If the streets feed Huston’s soul, and the contests his mentality, then the last part of the equation, his body, is a much more complicated affair.
In a sport where smashing concrete and taking falls are a necessary part of the growth process, time has far more sway than most skaters would like to admit. Deep down they know they can’t do this forever.
For most of his career, Huston has skirted major injuries. It wasn’t until two years ago that he underwent his first surgery. An ACL rupture, acquired while out on the streets filming a video part set the skater back several months. He knew from the moment of diagnosis he would do what it took to get back on the board, and with the same rigour and discipline instilled in him for his early years, Huston went through the motions to get it all done. But even he couldn't outwork the nagging feeling he might never skate the same again.
Remarkably, out of the anxiety, Huston did return and almost exactly where he left off.
A year after turning up and winning the first Olympic qualifier on the road to Paris in Italy, he marched back on Rome and won the event for a second time.
It is with no surprise then, that as the conversation around greatness continues on, Huston puts health on the table with video parts and contest results as something he is “proud of”:
“If you ask me how I would feel nowadays, let's say five, ten years ago, it would be questionable if I would still feel good enough to skate every day, almost every day, practice hard and really stay at that level because it's truly not easy. Even though all the skateboarders out there are great, we still have got to put in so much time to keep these tricks on point, learn new tricks, and stay at that level.”
He continues: “I mean, really, keeping the body up to shape takes a lot of work. I'm literally in my local physical therapy office at least once a week or twice a week, and that's just to keep up on maintenance. You know, even if I don't have an injury, you're still in there.”
Nyjah Huston pauses during practice at Paris 2024.
"You can never go out there with too much confidence"
Redemption, revenge, absolution: they are all words that will be used to talk of Huston’s Parisian pursuit when the Games get underway.
At Tokyo 2020, where skateboarding debuted, he finished the contest in seventh place despite being widely touted to take home the gold.
It was a result that weighed heavily on the skater, who apologised afterwards to those he felt he had let down.
The problem for Huston was the pressure: it was stifling. It also came from all directions. From himself, from the outside world - there was no escape. Whereas in other contests had he been unable to land a trick he would have tweaked it or turned to something easier, in Japan, he couldn’t resist the temptation to punish himself by continuing with what wasn’t working.
This time, he says, he’s changing tack.
“I’m going into Paris 2024 with more of an open mind than I was last time. So, I wouldn't call it ‘revenge’, because calling it that would just mean I'm still putting that much more pressure on myself to go out there and do better than I did last time, land every trick or whatever the case is.
“You can never, especially nowadays, you can never go out there with too much confidence or too much expectations because all these guys are just too good. It could be anyone's day, it really could.”
Huston draws on the example of the Olympic Qualifier Series in Shanghai where, after being too casual with his first run in the men’s prelims, he found himself needing to score more than 81.88 just to stay in the contest. It was a make-or-break moment with his quota spot far from secured.
In the end, he delivered but by getting in the cut he bumped out Olympic champion Yuto Horigome who, along with Jake Ilardi, Cordano Russell and Alex Midler, didn’t advance.
“It's just the perfect example that skateboarding is so technical and every day is not going to be your best day. So it's really just about preparing for what you can do to do your best when the time comes.”
"It's just not over yet"
When Huston does drop in at the Place de La Concorde his sights will be firmly locked on the gold; that, despite everything, hasn’t changed.
But there’s a sense this time that whatever happens in Paris he won’t let it define him, whatever the result may be.
The obvious sense of pride he shows for his consistent contest showings, his health and, above all, his work in the streets, feels unshakeable. It won’t stop once the Games end.
And as if to underline the point, as the conversation wraps up, Huston puts on a Hollywoodesque grin as he points towards the future.
“I think when it comes to my greatness and legacy, I would say it's just not over. It's not over yet because I've still got a lot of years left in me.”