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Old Saybrook Native Sablone Makes History at Olympics

Old Saybrook native Alexis Sablone recorded a fourth-place finish in the women’s street skateboarding event at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics on July 25 (July 26 in Tokyo). Sablone, age 34, posted a final score of 13.57 in the first women’s street skateboarding competition in Olympics history.

Sablone may have made her first Olympics appearance, but the Brooklyn resident was no stranger to competing on the big stage. Sablone has competed in women’s street skateboarding in the X-Games on 16 different occasions and claimed three gold medals, two silver medals, and two bronze medals. Entering the Olympics, Sablone was ranked No. 12 in the world in women’s street skateboarding competition.

Sablone reached the women’s street skateboarding finals in Tokyo after earning eighth place in the preliminaries with a score of 11.77. The top-8 scorers earned passage to the final round out of the 20 total competitors, which were divided into four heats of five skaters apiece in the preliminary round.

Sablone, who skates in a goofy stance, finished behind 13-year-old Nishiya Momiji of Japan, 13-year-old Rayssa Leal of Brazil, and 16-year-old Nakayama Funa of Japan. Momiji grabbed the gold medal with a score of 15.26, Leal snagged the silver with a tally of 14.64, and Funa brought home the bronze with a score of 14.49.

In street skateboarding, each competitor performs two 45-second runs in a street course with a handful of obstacles that can be used to perform tricks. In each run, the skater performs five tricks within the 45 seconds and each run and trick are awarded a score of 0.00 to 10.00 from a panel of five judges.

The two runs and five tricks are referred to as elements, and for each element, the highest and lowest scores from the judges are discarded with the average of the remaining three scores being used as the final tally for the element. After that, the four highest average scores of the seven elements are added together to give a final tally. The maximum score a skater can receive for a round is 40.00. The scoring criteria for the judges include difficulty, variety, quality of execution, use of course and individual obstacles, flow, style, speed, and consistency.

Sablone’s highest score for a trick came in the finals when she tallied a 5.01 for a kick-flip board slide, which was also the highest scored single element by any competitor in all of the final round. The only other skaters to pull a higher score for a single element were Funa with a 5.21 for her second trick in heat No. 3 and Leal with a 5.05 in her fifth trick of heat No. 4 of the preliminaries. Fellow USA teammate Mariah Duran also scored a 5.01 in her fifth trick of heat No. 1 of the preliminaries.

Sablone grew up in Old Saybrook and attended Hopkins School in New Haven. Her athletic career at Hopkins included basketball, soccer, and lacrosse. After watching a couple of children skateboarding at age 9, Sablone became enamored with the sport, and she received her first skateboard at age 10. At age 12, Sablone started to skate competitively, and gained a following after being featured in the Coliseum skate video PJ Ladd’s Wonderful, Horrible, Life in 2002.

After graduating The Hopkins School, Sablone attended Columbia University to earn her bachelor’s degree in architecture in 2008, and subsequently went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology receiving her master’s degree in 2016.

Sablone got her first signature pro skate deck in 2017 as a member of the WKND Skateboards team, and she also designed and released a pro skate shoe with Converse. Sablone has designed skateboard graphics, animations, and experimental furniture.