Sasaki Toa: After missing out on Paris 2024, new men's street world champion eyes LA 2028: 'I definitely want to be there'
The Japanese teenager is looking to follow in the footsteps of fellow world champions Horigome Yuto and Shirai Sora to the big time - and the next Olympic Games.
Skateboarding
Sasaki Toa is the third men’s street skateboarding world champion from Japan.
He can only hope his career trajectory will be as high as his two predecessors - a certain Horigome Yuto and Shirai Sora.
“I’m glad I won the championship,” the 17-year-old Sasaki told reporters last month after coming home from Rome, where he won the title at the World Skate Games Italia 2024, his first major international honour. “It still hasn’t sunk in yet so I don’t really know what to say about it.
“My score was pretty high. Now I know I have the moves to cut it at this level.”
At the top of his game, Sasaki Toa can hang with the best of them.
Sasaki Toa: "I definitely want to be (in LA 2028)"
In Rome, Sasaki followed in the footsteps of two-time Olympic gold medallist Horigome, who claimed the 2021 championship, and Shirai who won it last year on home soil in Tokyo.
With tow-time Olympians Horigome and Shirai passing on the World Skate Games, Sasaki put more than 11 points on the runner-up from Argentina, Matias Dell Olio.
Sasaki’s ascent to the top of the podium should come as no surprise, however. He won the 2022 Japan Skateboarding Championships and has been skating for American legend Nyjah Huston’s Disorder team since last year, proof of his legitimacy in the fraternity.
Sasaki, though, missed out on this summer’s Olympic Games Paris 2024 after finishing the qualifying race fifth in the Japanese pecking order behind Onodera Ginwoo, Shirai, Horigome and Netsuke Kairi.
Sasaki was 10th overall worldwide but in the deep, deep competition that is Japan, it was not enough for him to end up in the top three from his country.
But he will be the first to admit his work is cut out for him as a new Olympic cycle gets under way for the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.
“I fought to the very, very end and I came up short. I have to face up to the fact that I wasn’t good enough,” said Sasaki, who lives in Gamagori, Aichi Prefecture, with his two older brothers who are also skaters.
This weekend in Osaka, Sasaki returns to the Japan Skateboarding Championships. He is coming off seventh place at his X Games debut in Chiba a couple of weeks ago, but with neither Horigome nor Shirai in the 40-man field, there’s no excuse for him to not contend for the domestic crown.
If Sasaki wants to make the cut for LA28, that is - and he most certainly does.
“I was close but missed out on Paris,” he said. “I definitely want to be there next time.”