So all those other years, I was just doing it because I love doing it.”ĭuran, who is from Albuquerque, New Mexico, said she used the city as a training ground by finding outdoor parks, stairs, ledges and other obstacles in town. “, I would have to say I really fell in love with skateboarding even more, and that aspect of when all this other noise is canceled, I still love skating and I would do it regardless of whether the Olympics happened or not,” Duran told ABC News. “It’s going to make the conversation for younger girls who want to pick up a board, their parents might be more down to let them do it,” she added.Īfter a whirlwind 2019 during which she competed in qualification rounds and traveled, Duran said she used the extra time from postponement to reconnect with her love for skating. “It was big to just be a part of and work towards something and to have that extra goal set in front of me as a skater,” said Duran. and will compete against 26 nations in her Olympic debut. Two years later, she is the leading female skateboarder in the U.S.
#M. DURAN OLYMPIC GAMES TOKYO 2020 PROFESSIONAL#
In March 2019, professional skateboarder Mariah Duran was named one of 16 inaugural members comprising the USA Skateboarding National Team in the first Olympics Games to ever feature the sport. “Hopefully I can be that mentor that I had to those younger kids on the team and just come out and swim fast and have fun.” “We still have an incredible team here and they’re ready to compete and ready to go,” said King. Hungry to compete, King said that the yearlong wait will only make competing at the Olympic Games that much sweeter. Hopefully that’ll be helpful to those younger athletes and I know that would have been very helpful advice to me whenI was in their shoes.” “It is the Olympics, but in the end it’s just another swim meet. “Having a long career in this sport is just having a good outlook and a good attitude about things and that’s what I tried to do,” said King. King said that with her previous Olympics experience, she has looked forward to the Tokyo Games as a chance to step into a role as a leader and mentor to her teammates, many of whom are young. … You had to be really conscious about what you were saying out loud, or what you were thinking, because it was very noticeable to the people we were training with since we are a small group,” said King. “If one of us came to practice with a bad attitude one day, it would ruin the rest of it for the other nine of us. King said she and her teammates bonded over the brutally cold days in the pond and the long drives across the state to access the few pools that had begun to reopen. “He said, ‘Well, you better get one because we’re gonna swim in a pond.’ It was probably mid-April, but we started swimming in the pond in Indiana.
“I was sitting at home one day and my coach called me and said, ’Do you have a wetsuit?’” King said. In April 2020, King was forced to adapt her training routine to a world in which pools were closed due to COVID-19. “ my little meltdown that I had been waiting to have for five months… I got it out eventually and I think that was good,” she added. “, my mom actually got my Olympic flag framed from 2016… I saw the flag and that was kind of the moment, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, we’re not going right now.
#M. DURAN OLYMPIC GAMES TOKYO 2020 SERIAL#
I’m kind of … a serial under-reactor,” King told ABC News. “I heard the Olympics were postponed and I didn’t really know what to think. Yet still, she said the reality of the situation didn’t sink in until some time later.
When she heard the postponement news, King said she was at home training in Evansville, Indiana - it was just one of many training sessions she’d had over the previous months.
Two-time Olympic gold medalist Lilly King was a breakout star at the Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics in 2016 when she won first place in the 100-meter and 200-meter breaststroke. The Summer Olympics in Tokyo are now set to begin in less than two weeks, nearly 500 days after the International Olympics Committee announced the postponement of the Games on March 24, 2020.Īfter a year of extraordinary planning, the Tokyo Olympics will be different than any other Olympics Games before it: As the worldwide vaccination effort against COVID-19 continues, all spectators will be banned from attending the Games, the athletes will be isolated from one another, and all coaches, trainers and participants will be tested rigorously for COVID-19.Īfter going through what they called unprecedented training, three athletes spoke to ABC News about what it took for them to get to the Olympic stage while a global pandemic ravaged the world. Then the coronavirus pandemic swept across the world, putting the dreams of over 10,000 Olympic hopefuls on pause. (TOKYO) - Up until last year, the Olympic games had never been postponed for any other reason than a world war.
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