South Korea's national skateboard team, aiming for its best-ever Asian Games result, will depart for Nagoya on Sunday and Monday. The park discipline squad leaves Sunday, followed by the street squad a day later. Both groups will undergo on-site training before competition begins.
Among the squad, the athletes most expected to break through Japan's dominance in street skateboarding are Kang Jun-i (Flare3, Yeongdeungpo High School, Seoul, grade 3) and Shin Ji-yul (Samnangjin Middle School, South Gyeongsang Province, grade 3).
Kang finished seventh at last year's Street World Cup in Kitakyushu, Japan, then narrowly missed the podium with a fourth-place finish at the Street World Cup in Rome in June after a tight best-trick battle in the final rounds. Regrouping quickly, he traveled to the United States and Japan to compete at the 2026 MoonPay X Games Sacramento and the 2026 MoonPay X Games Chiba, collecting two gold medals, one silver and one bronze and showcasing peak form. He won the best-trick event — which tests the technical precision of individual tricks — at both competitions.
Shin Ji-yul is also considered a strong medal contender. He made a splashy international debut with a fourth-place finish at last year's Street World Cup in Kitakyushu, then placed sixth at this year's Rome Street World Cup, further raising his medal prospects. The international federation singled out his performance after he advanced to the semifinals in second place and then topped the field to enter the final in first, naming it the Performance of the Night: Korea's Jiyul Shin.
The park discipline lags behind street in overall competitiveness, and the team has had virtually no suitable training facilities in South Korea, forcing it to conduct preparation camps in China and Japan ahead of past Asian Games and Olympics. Most recently, the squad held an intensive training camp in Nanjing, China, in preparation for these Games. A setback came when Moon Gang-ho (Yulgok Middle School, Gangwon Province, grade 3), one of the park team's brightest hopes, suffered an injury during training and will miss the competition. Kim Dong-hyeok (Korea National Sport University, Seoul, second year) is preparing to step in as his replacement.
Skateboarding was first introduced as an official Asian Games discipline at the 2018 Jakarta-Palembang Games, and this will be the sport's third appearance at the event. At the inaugural 2018 competition, Eun Ju-won won a bronze medal in street, while at the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games, Jo Hyeon-ju narrowly missed the podium with a fourth-place finish in park. The team heads to Nagoya in the best form it has shown to date, aiming to surpass all previous results.
Kim Gyeong-seok, president of the Korea Roller Sports Federation and deputy chief of the South Korean delegation at these Games, urged the athletes to perform their best. "The skateboard competition falls during the chuseok holiday, so please give everything you have to bring home a medal and make it a joyful holiday gift for the Korean people," he said.
tiger@heraldcorp.com
