Alex Sorgente practices for the men's park skateboarding semifinal at Dew Tour on June 25, 2019 in Long Beach, Calif.
Americans Alex Sorgente and Tristan Rennie landed on the podium Saturday at the Vans Park Series World Championships in Salt Lake City.
With his fourth and final run, Sorgente had a chance to take the top spot from Sweden’s Oskar Rozenberg Hallberg, who had the highest-scoring run of 90.83, but he fell attempting a trick off his first wall. The rules allowed him a do-over, called a first wall rebate, and he tried the same move but fell again. He ultimately settled for second place with 85.57 points.
Sorgente is a two-time world champion, winning in 2016 and 2018, and has two X Games Minneapolis gold medals from 2017 and 2018, plus a bronze in 2019. This is his best finish in the Vans Park Series this season.
Rennie scored 83.73.
Sorgente, of Lake Worth, Florida, and Rennie, of Rialto, California, are members of the first-ever U.S. national skateboarding team, announced earlier this year. Skateboarding will make its Olympic debut in 2020 in Tokyo, and the Olympic team will be determined in May 2020.
Sorgente and Rennie are currently ranked seventh and 18 in the Olympic ranking for men’s park, which has so far had two of three events in the first of two seasons.
In the Vans Park Series format, the top eight skaters from the semifinals qualified for the final. They each have four runs that last until the skater falls, with a maximum of 40 seconds per run.
Hallberg was the early leader with a score of 87.17 on the first run while U.S. skater C.J. Collins was in second place. Sorgente was in fourth and Rennie sixth after the first run, but both picked up steam and landed high-scoring runs to move into podium position.
Karen Price is a reporter from Pittsburgh who has covered Olympic sports for various publications. She is a freelance contributor to TeamUSA.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.