Twelve Misses in a Row: How Onodera and Oda Won the Street World Championship in Asunción

Intro

A street final is usually decided by who lands their tricks under pressure. In Asunción, Paraguay, the men's final at the 2026 Street World Championship was decided by who could land anything at all. After the run section, the Best Trick section opened with twelve failed attempts in a row. When one finally stuck, it was the first of the section, and World Skate said it had never happened before.

Japan took both titles. Sixteen-year-old Ginwoo Onodera won the men's final with a last-attempt trick that scored 92.12, ahead of South Korea's Kang Juni. Yumeka Oda won her second world title in three years by beating Australia's Chloe Covell, who had led after the run section. Japan's Taiga Nagai took men's bronze and Coco Yoshizawa took women's bronze, so Japan won four of the six medals.

This report is built from World Skate's own event reports, which were sent as newsletters during the week, and from the official result lists for every round from the Open Qualifier to the finals. We also checked it against independent coverage where we could find it. Where a detail comes from one source only, we say so, and the last section lists what we could not confirm. Photos are not included because the official event photos are distributed to media under World Skate's own terms, so the graphics below are ours.

The final results

Men's street final

Women's street final

These figures come from World Skate's official result lists. The best run and best trick columns show the highest score each skater had in the run and Best Trick sections. In every row the two add up to the total, which is how the final is scored: best run plus best trick, with a theoretical maximum of 200. Kang's totals also match the SBS News report of his silver, which is where we first saw them.

The tables show something that words cannot: in the men's final, only three skaters landed a Best Trick at all. Nagai, Kang and Onodera did, and the other five finished with nothing in that section. In the women's final, six of the eight did, and Yoshizawa landed all three of hers.

A course rebuilt for the Games

The Street World Championship was held at the Paraguayan Olympic Committee's campus in the Asunción area, on a course that World Skate describes as a total rebuild of the existing one to international standards. Sylvio Az of Rio Ramp Design, which worked with California Skateparks on the redesign, told World Skate that the team kept the classic rectangular footprint and the quarter pipes on one side. They then widened the decks, raised the central platform that holds the main handrail and the big hubbas, added new obstacles and moved away from symmetrical, mirrored obstacles. In his words, they used the existing structure and built "an entirely new course on top of it".

The design had a second goal. World Skate's Skateboarding Director Luca Basilico said that countries building skateparks now, many of which first met skateboarding through the Olympics, treat what is built for the Games as "the sacred word". That is why, he said, the Paris Olympic street course was made a little lower than the one in Tokyo. The Asunción course follows the same thinking. It has the standard hubba ledges and a nine-stair handrail, but also very long flat bars, a kicker over stairs and chunky A-frame rails, which World Skate says invite trick innovation without being particularly dangerous in themselves.

The field was large. World Skate reports 242 registered skaters, 155 men and 87 women, from 66 countries.

How the format works

World Skate's event guide describes the street format as follows. Qualifiers and quarterfinals are best of two 45-second runs. Semifinals add three single "Best Trick" attempts per skater to two runs. Finals have three runs and three Best Trick attempts. Each run or trick is scored from 0 to 100, for a theoretical maximum of 200, and the best eight skaters advance to the final.

The official result list for the final shows how that maximum of 200 is built: each skater's total is their best run plus their best Best Trick. Onodera's 90.14 run and 92.12 trick give his 182.26, for example. World Skate's event guide does not spell the rule out in words, but every row in the final's result list follows it.

The quarterfinals had 40 skaters per division: the top 32 from the Open Qualifier plus eight pre-seeded skaters, which World Skate defines as the podium of the last World Skateboarding Tour stop and the five highest-ranked skaters on the World Skateboarding Ranking not on that podium. Those 40 skated in four heats of ten, and 16 per division reached the semifinals.

Open Qualifier: weather, form and a close call

The Open Qualifier ran over two long days and began under a persistent drizzle that gave the early heats a stop-start feel. World Skate reported that most skaters seemed to find the new course agreeable, and the level of tricks rose quickly through the first rounds.

Nyjah Huston struck first with a 68.12 in Heat 5, a score that guaranteed him a place and left the rest chasing. Jagger Eaton was the first past 70 points in Heat 7, with two switch handrail tricks and a Blunt to Frontside Kickflip on the quarter pipe, and showed no sign of the ankle trouble that has bothered him lately, according to World Skate. His 76.31 topped the whole men's qualifier, ahead of Horigome (74.81), Braden Hoban (72.35) and Huston (68.12). Ginwoo Onodera, the eventual champion, qualified sixth on 65.90. In the last men's heat, Yuto Horigome made it easy on himself with a first run that did everything he needed.

Two near misses stood out. Gabryel Aguilar had an almost perfect opening run, spoiled only by a missed Tailslide Shove-It at the end, and missed the cut by three points. Gustavo Ribeiro missed the lock on his last trick, a gap to rail, and still squeaked through by less than half a point, a reminder that you can still progress from an Open Qualifier with an incomplete run.

On the women's side, World Skate picked out a group of rising talents, among them Italy's Irene Panzavolta, Argentina's Morena Dominguez and Australia's Cora Wilton, who qualified first with a Frontside Feeble on the handrail and a score of 64.46. Japan's Ria Tanno was the first woman past 60 points in the Open Qualifier, finishing second on 60.40. China's Nanfang Dai, aged 13, who qualified ninth on 50.03, stood out for style with Smith and Feeble grinds on the handrail in a 45-second run.

Quarterfinals: Papa at 36, Toa's 80 and Nyjah's return

The quarterfinals started with the men, and Silas Aagaard-Hagen opened with a full run of flip-to-slide combinations. Canada's Micky Papa, 36, put together two clean runs and a Kickflip Frontside 50-50 on the handrail to end the second, though the official list shows it was not enough to reach the semifinals.

Heat 3 had the most movement. The lead changed hands between Filipe Mota, Matias Dell Olio and Ginwoo Onodera in back-to-back runs. Nyjah Huston came back to the World Skateboarding Tour and booked his place in the semifinals with a first run that opened with a Nollie Nosegrind on the handrail and ended with a Nollie Backside Nosebluntslide on the A-frame. Heat 4 was patchy. Only three skaters opened as they intended, and nobody in the heat delivered two full runs. Toa Sasaki's run, which included a Backside 360 to flat, scored 83.35, the first score of the day above 80 and the top score of the round. The last qualifier was Matheus Mendes on 63.24.

The women's quarterfinals took place in sunshine on a clear evening. Australia's Liv Lovelace held Heat 1 with the only 60-plus score, and Liz Akama returned to form in Heat 3 with the first 70-plus score, which included the Frontside Bigspin she is known for. Korea's Jiyul Shin joined her above 70 with a 45-second run that had three A-frame tricks. In Heat 4, Chloe Covell produced the only scores above 80 of the evening and topped the round with 83.46. Ibuki Matsumoto needed to beat Flic Turner's 59.69, the last qualifying score, and just barely missed out.

Semifinals: Kang's trick, Onodera's run

The Saturday semifinals had a full house of fans and a clear shape. The men's field of 16 was 7 Japanese, 4 Brazilians, 2 Americans and one skater each from Korea, Peru and Argentina. Only two of them, Taisei Hamamura and Matheus Mendes, were new to the semifinal stage on the Tour.

In Heat 1, Taiga Nagai put in two full runs, which is uncommon at this level, including an 83, and advanced in fourth. Kairi Netsuke gambled on a Tailslide Heelflip to Fakie at the buzzer, got a little squirrelly, but still took the lead after a perfect second run. Angelo Caro was the first into the 80s with a first run that, in World Skate's account, helped make him a crowd favourite. In Heat 2, Korea's Juni Kang steadied the heat with a full run after the first four skaters came unstuck. Brazil's Gio Vianna followed with two flawless runs.

The semifinals also decided who would not be in the final. Nyjah Huston hesitated on his opening Switch Tailslide, and Jagger Eaton, despite his ankle, left the run section off the pace. That meant there would be no American in the men's final. Japan's Yuto Horigome and Sora Shirai also went out after missing opening and ending tricks. It was Ginwoo Onodera who closed the heat with the highest run score of the day, 86.8, built on a Kickflip Backlip into the gap to rail, a trick that World Skate says no other skater had thrown into that obstacle up to that point. Kang scored the only 90-plus Best Trick of the semifinals, a Gap to Suciu Grind that he had not practised. In the official list Onodera finished first on 170.60, Kang second on 170.23 and Kairi Netsuke third on 170.07, so the top three were separated by half a point. Ivan Monteiro took the eighth and last place on 157.63.

The women's semifinal was more international: 4 Japanese, 4 Australians, 2 Brazilians, 2 Chinese, and one each from Canada, the USA, Korea and Spain. World Skate noted that this was Australia's strongest team at this level. Cora Wilton led after Heat 1 with 142.46, and Spain's Daniela Terol was the only European still in the competition. In Heat 2, Yumeka Oda doubled down on a strong run with a Kickflip Front Board caught on her back foot. Liz Akama stumbled out of two attempts at a Barley Grind and held the third, which slipped into a Boardslide, but her run score was enough to edge Terol for eighth place and the last final spot, on 135.96. Jiyul Shin topped the semifinal on 160.41, ahead of Covell (158.45) and Yoshizawa (156.06).

The men's final: the Best Trick curse

Ivan Monteiro opened the final by reprising the run that had got him there, touching most of the course, but could not upgrade it in the next two runs and then spent the Best Trick section chasing a Tre Flip Noseblunt on the gap to rail without success. Angelo Caro opened with a Biggerflip Front Board and ended on the Backside 180 Fakie Nosegrind Backside 180 out that nearly caused a riot in the stands, and then also left the Best Trick section empty-handed.

The pattern kept spreading. Gio Vianna had not missed a beat all week and posted 85 in his third run, but he found no Best Trick either. Incumbent World Champion Toa Sasaki had what World Skate called his worst final to date, and neither he nor Kairi Netsuke left the run section with a completed run. Both also went without a Best Trick score, which World Skate called absolutely unheard of.

With four podium threats gone, Taiga Nagai, in his first World Skateboarding Tour final, found himself close to a big result. His second-try Bigspin Front Blunt Shove-It on the handrail was the first make of the Best Trick section after 12 failed attempts back to back. That was the first time, according to World Skate, that a streak like that had happened in a final. It scored 83.09, the same as his best run, and it was enough for bronze: his 166.18 was more than 80 points clear of fourth-placed Vianna, because no one else would land a trick.

The favourites for the title were Juni Kang and Ginwoo Onodera, neither of whom had ever won a World Skateboarding Tour stop. Kang looked in control until, rolling between runs, he caught his toe on the hubba trying a Nollie 270 Noseslide he almost never misses and landed on his face. The medics called for a stretcher. Instead he got to his feet, had his good wrist strapped and came back with both wrists supported. He then landed a Switch 270 Lipslide over the gap to rail, a trick he had not come close to making before, with his second Best Trick attempt, for 90.11.

Onodera, who had broken 90 in the run section with a run that included a Kickflip Back Tail Bigspin out on the hubba, missed his second Best Trick attempt. Everyone else missed their last attempts. That left Onodera with one more try and a need for a trick worth more than 89 points. He landed a Bigflip Front Blunt Bigspin out on his third attempt, and the score was 92.12. His 90.14 run plus the 92.12 trick gave him 182.26, which beat Kang's 179.32 by 2.94 points. Only three tricks were landed in the whole Best Trick section.

It was Onodera's first World Skateboarding Tour stop win and made him world champion. Wikipedia lists his birth date as 15 February 2010, so he is 16. He is also already an X Games champion, with a street gold from Chiba in 2023, according to Wikipedia. For Kang, 18 according to SBS, the silver is the highest result South Korean skateboarding has had at the World Championships, and it comes one month after he won Korea's first Asian Games skateboarding gold in Aichi-Nagoya.

The women's final: seven skaters, plenty of Best Tricks

Cora Wilton withdrew from the final through illness, so only seven women started, according to World Skate. Those seven still landed nine Best Tricks between them, three times as many as the men's final.

Liz Akama, who had only just made the final, was a different skater on the day: a perfect first run ending in a Frontside 180 Fakie Nosegrind for 75.48, upgraded to 78.11 on her third run, and then the Barley Grind that had caused her trouble the day before, landed first go for 76.52. She finished fourth. Jiyul Shin, who had topped the semifinal, suffered the same fate as Toa Sasaki and Kairi Netsuke in the men's final and left the run section with no real chance of a podium. She still landed a Kickflip Back Lip she had not practised, for 81.85, and nearly landed a Kickflip Back Tail on the A-frame rail. She finished sixth. Coco Yoshizawa landed all three of her Best Tricks, including a gap to Front Blunt that nobody of either sex tried, and her best, 83.80, helped her to bronze on 159.26. A 75.46 run was not enough to catch the two leaders.

The leaders were Chloe Covell and Yumeka Oda, both clinical in the run section. Covell had a cushion of 7.5 points entering the Best Trick section. Oda landed a Kickflip Front Feeble on her first attempt for 88.73, which left Covell needing more than 81.2. Her Noseblunt on the handrail was perfect but scored 78.23, and she finished 2.97 points behind, 167.97 to 170.94.

Oda won her second world title in three years. She won the 2023 title in Tokyo, according to an Olympics.com headline in search results, and has since taken second at WST Kitakyushu and at the World Cup in Rome in June. Wikipedia lists her birth date as 30 October 2006, so she is 19. World Skate called her a deserved repeat champion. Covell, who won the Rome World Cup by a record 22 points, remains in World Skate's words the best-rounded and most progressive skater in the women's field.

Where the sources disagree

• How many women started the final. World Skate's report says only seven women started because Cora Wilton withdrew through illness. The official result list shows eight, with Wilton in eighth place on 0.22 from run one and zeros elsewhere, which fits a withdrawal. SBS describes Shin's sixth place as sixth of eight, matching the list. We say seven women started and eight are listed.
• Oda's decisive trick. World Skate's text gives the Kickflip Front Feeble as 89.7. The result list gives 88.73. We use the list, whose figures add up to the total.
• Wilton's semifinal score. World Skate's text says 142.26 and the official list says 142.46. We use the list.
• The venue. World Skate names the event as taking place in Asunción, on the campus of the Paraguayan Olympic Committee next to the country's international airport. SBS places the event in Luque, a city next to Asunción. We say the Asunción area.

Why it matters

World Skate describes the Street World Championship as the first big points event on the Road to LA28, and its event guide calls the World Skateboarding Tour the sole pathway to skateboarding at the Olympics. The ranking points that these results feed into are not published in the sources we could read, so we cannot say how many points Onodera, Kang, Oda and Covell earned.

The form was visible in Rome in June, where Japan swept the men's podium with Sora Shirai, Kairi Netsuke and Toa Sasaki, and Covell won the women's event with Oda second and China's Chenxi Cui third. Asunción reshuffled it: Shirai, Netsuke and Sasaki did not win this time, and the new men's champion was a 16-year-old from the same Japanese team. Japan still took four of the six medals.

What we could not verify

• Where the result lists came from. The result lists are World Skate's own and were provided to us as images. We typed the figures from them by hand and checked that every row adds up, but we could not compare them with World Skate's website.
• Quarterfinal and Open Qualifier lists. The images we had show the quarterfinal lists in full but only the top 23 of each Open Qualifier, so we only use those ranks.
• Which trick scored which number. The result lists give scores, not trick names. Trick names come from World Skate's reports. We did not check them against video.
• Calendar dates. The park article on this site cites World Skate's event page for street as 11 to 18 October, which would put the final on Sunday 18 October. Neither World Skate's reports nor SBS gave the exact date.
• Ranking points. Not published in the sources we read.
• Olympics.com's results page. We saw its headline in search results, "Japan win both, Oda for the second time, Onodera for the first", but the page could not be read by our tool, so we did not use it for details.

Sources

• World Skate Skateboarding Blog: WSG ASU26 Street Skateboarding Open Qualifier Results: https://www.skateboarding.worldskate.org/news/1879-wsg-asu26-street-skateboarding-open-qualifier-results.html
• World Skate Skateboarding Blog: WSG ASU26 Street Skateboarding Quarterfinal Results: https://www.skateboarding.worldskate.org/news/1880-wsg-asu26-street-skateboarding-quarterfinal-results.html
• World Skate Skateboarding Blog: WSG ASU26 Street Skateboarding Semifinal Results: https://www.skateboarding.worldskate.org/news/1881-wsg-asu26-street-skateboarding-semifinal-results.html
• World Skate newsletter, WSG ASU26: Street Skateboarding World Championship Results, sent by email
• World Skate official result lists: Men's and Women's Final, Semifinal and Quarterfinal, plus the Open Qualifier lists (images provided to us)
• World Skate Skateboarding Blog: World Skate Games Asunción, All You Need To Know: https://www.skateboarding.worldskate.org/news/1872-world-skate-games-asunci%C3%B3n-all-you-need-to-know.html
• SBS News: Skateboarder Kang Jun-i Finishes as Runner-up in Street Event at World Championships: https://news.sbs.co.kr/english/article.do?news_id=N1008803542
• Korea Times, Asian Games: S. Korea wins gold in men's street skateboarding: https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/sports/20260927/asian-games-s-korea-wins-gold-in-mens-street-skateboarding-at-asian-games
• World Skate, World Skateboarding Tour World Cup Rome Street 2026 results: https://www.worldskate.org/news/3906-world-skateboarding-tour-world-cup-rome-street%202026-results.html
• Wikipedia, Ginwoo Onodera: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginwoo_Onodera
• Wikipedia, Yumeka Oda: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yumeka_Oda
• Olympics.com (headline seen in search results, page not read): https://www.olympics.com/ja/news/skateboarding-street-world-championships-2026-in-asuncion-results
• Olympics.com, X Games Chiba 2023 day 3, Onodera: https://olympics.com/en/news/x-games-chiba-2023-day-3-onodera-ginwoo-history