With her Street win on Saturday night, fourteen-year-old Japanese skater Momiji Nishiya has completed an incredible trifecta across the biggest events in skateboarding: she won gold at the Tokyo Olympics in July 2021, won X Games 2022 one week ago, and has now emerged triumphant at Dew Tour Des Moines 2022.
“I’m so happy: I enjoy skating with all the Dew Tour skaters,” she said in English before turning to her manager Kohei Nishikawa for translation assistance. “I couldn’t get the bigflip front board in previous events. When I fell, trying it last week at X Games, my first thought was: next time, at Dew Tour.”
Landing it in Run 3 helped increase her lead and, bonus, also earned her Best Trick honors. The full run: frontside feeble grind, nollie heelflip, salad grind, Suski grind, bigflip front board, bigspin front board.
Brazil’s Pamela Rosa finished 2nd, failing to defend after dominating the three previous Dew Tour Women’s Street contests consecutively, from 2018-2021, but still making a strong showing with the fastest skating of the night and a bigspin frontside boardslide to try to match the level of technicality coming from younger competitors.
Rosa’s full Run 2: bump to backside lipslide, backside Smith grind, bigspin frontside boardslide (answering the same trick in each of Momiji Nishiya’s runs), high-speed backside Smith grind, frontside lipslide down the 9-stair handrail, frontside 180 step-up on the Euro gap at the buzzer.
Australian Chloe Covell, the youngest in the field at age 12, finished 3rd, with an incredible Run 1 featuring a kickflip over the U.S. Air Force bump-to-bump gap, nosegrind, boardslide, frontside 50-50 down the 9-stair handrail, kickflip, switch frontside boardslide, and a switch kickflip up the Euro gap at the buzzer.
Rayssa Leal, who ended up in 4th, ran to hug Covell after the run, celebrating the only true switch skating of the contest.
Covell is on a podium tear: she finished 3rd at X Games Chiba in Japan in April 2022 and 2nd at X Games last week, in her first year on the major international contest circuit. She finished 7th at the World Skate Street Championships in Rome, Italy earlier this month. Here with her father Luke Covell, a former professional rugby player, she says it’s her first trip to the United States. The Dew Tour podium makes her the youngest person ever to land on a Dew Tour podium.
Nishiya, who had hugs and high fives for her competitors on the podium, said she loves being in the midst of such strong skaters. “Everyone is so good, and it makes it so fun,” Nishiya said. “Pamela, Chloe, Rayssa, Funa… everybody was skating so good. It’s when you see people going for new tricks that makes it exciting.”
Top Three Winning runs from Women’s Street Final | Dew Tour Des Moines 2022
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