13-year-old skateboarding prodigy Onodera Ginwoo poised to impress at X Games Chiba 2023
Skateboarding's latest prodigy off the Japanese conveyor belt, Onodera is set to make his X Games debut this weekend in Chiba - and it just might be phenomenal.
Skateboarding
Onodera Ginwoo may only be 13, but he took the world by storm in February at the Street Skateboarding World Championships where he became the youngest male medallist ever with bronze behind Aurelien Giraud and Gustavo Ribeiro.
This weekend, Onodera will take his talent to X Games Chiba 2023 where he will make his first appearance at the actions sports extravaganza in what could be a debut to remember.
“When I got the invite I was so stoked,” Onodera said during an interview with X Games broadcaster NTV. “I am going to try to nail every trick.”
Onodera Ginwoo: “I’m always aiming for first place"
Onodera’s fast rise began in November, when he was runner-up to compatriot Ikeda Daiki at the famed Tampa Am.
Later that month, Onodera went on to win the Japan Skateboarding Championships, a contest he was noncommittal to until the last minute - until he could convince his mother to drive him to the other side of the country from Yokohama to Niigata Prefecture.
Yet Onodera, still 12 at the time, won.
“I just thought I’d try the national championships. There’s nothing deep about it at all,” he said. “I wanted to see what it’s about.
“I wasn’t sure whether I’d compete in it or not. I just got back from Tampa where I was saying that I wasn’t going to do it. My mum didn’t want to make the drive at first.”
Then came the Worlds in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. As the big guns like Horigome Yuto and Shane O’Neill flopped, Onodera ate it all up - like the bacon and eggs he almost always eats every morning, and the wonton soup he devours.
Get Onodera off a deck and he is unquestionably a 13-year-old in every way, a teenager who listens to Lil John and DMX and loves fooling around with his younger sister and friends.
Onodera said skateboarding kind of happened on him. He never had grand dreams about wanting to win this or that competition, nor become the first in history to throw down some gravity-defying trick.
But make no mistake, Onodera isn’t kidding when he says he wants to win his first X Games this week at ZOZO Marine Stadium, where plenty of eyes will be on Japan's newest golden child less defending champion Horigome.
“I want to win every competition I enter. Always,” he said.
“I’m always aiming for first place, I do want to win. But ultimately, it’s a fight against yourself.”