Bryce Wettstein and Brighton Zeuner talked to Tokyo 2020 about their long friendship, skateboarding's essence and what it means to be making an Olympic debut along with the sport they both love.
6 min
Skateboarding
Bryce Wettstein and Brighton Zeuner – Team USA park skateboarders at these Olympic Games in Tokyo – also happen to be best friends and competitors hunting their sport's first-ever Olympic gold. They both spoke to Tokyo 2020 about these historic Games and the profound sense of camaraderie skateboarding seems to produce.
"I think skateboarding coincides with the beauty of being able to unlock creativity wherever you are,” said Bryce Wettstein, of Encinitas California, ahead of the debut of park skateboarding at the Olympics.
While the street skateboarding events, earlier in the Games, were the actual debut of the sport, the acrobatic park skaters are ready to produce their high-flying best at the Ariake Urban Sports Park on the shores of Tokyo Bay (starting with the women's competition on 4 August).
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Even by the creatively charged standards of her sport, Wettstein is a little bit out there. But in the most delightful way. She combines (or even invents) words to suit the needs of a particular thought and the 16 year-old has expansive ideas across many topics including sports, music, poetry style and, well, the life we’re living here on planet earth.
Creativity to the fore
“Our whole being is uplifted when we skateboard, whether it’s in a competition or just out with our friends,” said Wettstein, who is the eighth-ranked women’s park skater in the world and won bronze at the 2021 X Games in Los Angeles. “It’s inevitable that our creativity will float to the surface and bubble up. It’s like if you sit in front of a piano and you realise there are keys and as soon as your fingers hit them, the keys unlock.”
There was always going to be an uneasy alliance between skateboarding’s outsider ethos and the Olympics’ regimentation and focus on hierarchies like podiums and medals and rankings. But Wettstein likes to float on the margins. She dances in the spaces in between. And, despite having to qualify via scores and rankings at competitions, the ethereal elements of the sport are never far from her mind.
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“The beauty of skateboarding, wherever you are, is that your skateboard finds a way to kind of become the majestic halo over your head,” said Wettstein, who likes to blur the lines between style, creativity and technical ability out on the park, where she’s often seen wearing a pair of signature red suspenders -- or a colourful bow in her tufts of blonde hair.
One of skateboarding’s essential elements, which was on full display during the debut of the street events earlier in these Games, was the camaraderie among athletes who are, on the surface and in very real ways, opponents.
According to Wettstein, it’s all one big team. A family even.
“We all have this competitive side and we’re like ‘whoa, this is our moment,’” she said. “And then there’s this family aspect where you’re a part of the bigger skateboarding family. And you know this is such a beautiful thing that we’re all in together."
All on the same side
“So when we're skateboarding we’re all on the same team,” she went on. “When I’m doing my runs, I’ll hear some of my best friends cheering me on – and rooting for me. There’s this friendship and this mutuality and it’s so magnificent.”
Wettstein’s best friend, Brighton Zeuner, is one of those most often calling out to Wettstein, urging her on to bigger and better things. And she’s with her here in Tokyo too – a fellow Olympian and, somehow, an opponent and a teammate all rolled into one.
“I think what I like best about skating is that when you go to a skatepark, it like feels like a second home, because growing up when I went to my home state park, I would have all these friends there and I just would get to learn tricks,” said Zeuner who was born in Arizona, but moved with her family to Wettstein’s home state of California. “It just felt like I was like at a playground and it just was just fun.”
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“I didn't have to look at it as training,” added Zeuner, part of a three-skater team of American women in the park discipline that also includes Hawaii's surf-style specialist Jordyn Barratt. “You’re just progressing and learning tricks with friends and hyping everyone up. It's a really cool environment to be around.
“Every day we’d just skate together,” 17-year-old Zeuner said about becoming fast friends with Wettstein, whose backyard ramp set-up is the stuff of skateboarding dreams.
“There are struggles that come with anything you try to do,” added Zeuner, a two-time Summer X Games gold medallist in 2017 and 2018. “And it's cool to share that with someone that I grew up with [like Wettstein]. We had no intention of going to the Olympics when we first started skateboarding. So I think that's what's really cool. Bryce and I definitely can relate to a lot of stuff with the struggle and the good things about competing in skateboarding."
While Zeuner admits to a healthy rivalry alive among she and her friend/teammate/opponent Wettstein, she also knows: “neither of us would ever really admit it.”
Style points in the park
Out on the park, a concrete series of bowls and bumps, style counts for a lot. It’s difficult to pin down, but skateboarders make much of it -- and they know good style when they see it.
“Everyone’s style is different, like their fingerprint,” said Wettstein. "Every single person is extraordinary. And it’s just magic and it’s beautiful when it comes out. A lot of times someone will end up spinning in the complete reverse way that someone else might do it and suddenly there’s this earthquake and it’s like whoa!”
When the dreamier aspects of skateboarding collide with the harder edges of Olympic competition, it can be jarring. This isn't lost on Wettstein. “It’s insane. The Olympics. It’s like something I’ve been watching my whole life on TV. You think about gymnastics and those kinds of things and now skateboarding is there too -- this sport that is obscure in the most beautiful way,” she said. "And how can you not smile when you think of skateboarding in the Olympics?”
Smiles are a guarantee. And one more thing is certain: Come 4 August, park skateboarding will be an official Olympic sport. It might be tough for the uninitiated to tell the difference between opponents and teammates, friends and rivals -- or where the lines between technical rigour and style intersect. But the competitive edge, and the oozing creativity, will be there on glorious display for all to enjoy.
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