Alex Sorgente competes in the men's skateboard park at X Games Minneapolis on Aug. 4, 2019 in Minneapolis.
U.S. skateboarders Alex Sorgente and Nyjah Huston were seeking history at the X Games in Minneapolis this weekend.
Both emerged with medals.
Sorgente, who was attempting to be the first to win three consecutive gold medals in men’s skateboarding park in the Minneapolis X Games, settled for the bronze medal on Sunday. He had won his semifinal group, but a missed jump in his final run in the finals left him in third place behind Ivan Federico of Italy and Jagger Eaton of the U.S.
In addition to his second-place finish in park, Eaton just missed the podium in street, finishing fourth.
Huston, who has the most X Games medals in history among men street skateboarders, won the silver medal in Saturday’s street finals. He reached the podium for the third straight year in Minneapolis, finishing runner-up to Yuto Horigome of Japan, but fell just one point short of defending his 2018 title.
Huston had a score of 88 on his second run, but Horigome beat him out for the gold medal with an 89. Huston, who won a gold medal earlier this year at the X Games Shanghai, has 18 X Games medals and has reached the podium in his last 16 X Games competitions.
Also capturing a medal Sunday was Mariah Duran, the 2018 gold medalist in women’s street who finished third to win the bronze medal. She put together a strong second run, finishing it off with a board flip for a score of 88.33.
This was Duran’s third X Games medal in the last two years and her fourth since 2016
Among those in the crowd at Sunday’s competition was Chloe Kim, the 2018 Olympic gold medalist in women’s snowboarding halfpipe and two-time Youth Olympic gold medalist.
In women’s skateboarding park on Friday, Bryce Wettstein was the only American to make the finals. She placed sixth.
Paul D. Bowker has been writing about Olympic sports since 1996, when he was an assistant bureau chief in Atlanta. He is a freelance contributor to TeamUSA.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.