Australia’s Insane Games: Best gold haul since modern Olympics began

Tokyo: Australia has never won more gold, and dude, we have never been this cool.

For that, we can thank a couple of Chesty Bonds paddlers and a skinny kid with a sandy mop of hair who skates with the freedom that our nation in lockdown so desperately craves.

Australia’s 17th gold medal of these Games – equal of our best haul since the modern Olympics began – was won by 18-year-old Keegan Palmer, an Aussie-American skateboarder with a style as smooth as a Shinkansen train.

Keegan Palmer of Australia competes in the men’s park skateboarding finals on Thursday.Credit: AP

Palmer’s spectacular and seemingly effortless winning run at the skate park came within a few minutes of kayakers Thomas Green and Jean van der Westhuyzen holding off Germany’s world champion team to become the first Australian pair to win the 1000-metre event at an Olympics.

Green said it was beautiful. Van der Westhuyzen thanked God. Palmer was just stoked to be hanging with his friends in downtown Tokyo.

“Skateboarding is a family,” Palmer said of the new Olympic sport after sharing the podium with two of his best mates and sporting idols, Brazil’s Pedro Barros and American Cory Juneau.

“No one cares about what country you come from. If you put down hard runs people will support you. I have known these guys since I was nine years old. It’s what makes skateboarding so great.”

Mates: Keegan Palmer and Kieran Woolley at the men’s skateboarding final on Thursday.Credit: Getty Images

To anyone who follows skateboarding, Palmer was a star well before coming to Tokyo. At the age of 14, he became the youngest winner of the Bondi Bowl-a-Rama. That’s a big deal in this sport and since then, Palmer has been carving it up on the pro circuit.

To those watching top-level skateboarding for the first time, you should expect to see plenty more of this kid with a sun-kissed face and, remarkably for a skater boy, all his own teeth.

Palmer was born in California and grew up on the Gold Coast before returning to the US to pursue his sport. He learnt to skate from his father Chris, a touring surfer, and was soon popping tricks his dad could only dream of trying.

His favourite trick is a mind-boggling manoeuvre known as a kickflip body varial 540; a blur of spinning board and flying feet. He’d already won gold when, just for kicks, he pulled one out in his final run in Tokyo.

In addition to English he speaks fluent Californese and, without taking a poll of all athletes in Tokyo, might just have the best lifestyle of anyone in the Olympic village. In an interview with Whistle, a popular YouTube channel, Palmer recently explained what a usual day in Carlsbad involves.

“It is nice to go surfing in the morning when you wake up. Then when I get back I do school for like an hour, an hour and a half. And after that I pretty much just skate into the night.

“I can’t even tell you how much I love being able to skate every day, dude. It is like sickly. Being able to skate every day is insane dude. It is crazy you can do that.”

It is crazy; kinda like Australia’s two weeks in Tokyo.

The only other Games where Australia won 17 gold medals was Athens. That was four years after Sydney, when our team was powered by Ian Thorpe and Anna Meares, and James Tomkins was still rowing his boat.

The men’s hockey team also won gold at those Games, a feat the Kookaburras came agonisingly close to replicating on Thurday night before they lost to Belgium on penalties.

Chef de mission Ian Chesterman, when asked about the Australian team’s milestone, said he was happy for the athletes but didn’t want to say too much. “The real satisfaction will come when we can sit back and think on all these performances and what has been achieved.”

The last thing this Australian team needs is an old dude to kill the vibe. Besides, Chesterman and most of Australia’s Olympians will have plenty of time for that when they return to Australia to two weeks of hard quarantine.

There are no such worries for Palmer, who will fly home to a California beach and a dazzling bright future.

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