On the sideline, her mom, her agent, and USA Skateboarding women’s coach Mimi Knoop offered their reassurance, but Wettstein’s dissatisfaction was evident. And when one of her friends-or, more importantly, her competitors-scores higher than Wettstein, she is the first to run over and offer an exuberant embrace.īut when she didn’t land the run she wanted to in the women’s park final Sunday morning, finishing sixth in the field of eight, it was clear Wettstein knew she had left something on the table.
Wettstein’s skating style-laid-back, somewhat old-school, floaty, elegant-belies her technical prowess. There’s that idiosyncrasy again-how she navigates the dichotomy between gentle soul and fierce competitor.
It’s clear the 17-year-old has been blessed with wisdom beyond her years-she’s frequently referred to as an old soul-but don’t think for a second Wettstein doesn’t care about winning. I can see the whole wildflower field.”ĭES MOINES, IOWA - MAY 21: Bryce Wettstein looks on during the Women's Park Semifinal at the Dew. I’ve never been so grateful to be where I am. How much we have the ability to change every single second, to be filled with so much idiosyncrasy. And, oh my gosh, each and every day I realize how many more things are out there that you never knew that you’d ever stumble on. “I’m just realizing now how much I’m yearning to be that flower.
#Ollie oop skating full#
“We’re never in our full capacity,” she said. Now I feel like I’m on maybe my ninth petal, almost a full flower, but even then you probably end up like a hermit crab, ditching your shell and finding another one.”Įven if her guiding purpose in skateboarding isn’t about reaching a competition-the Olympics or otherwise-Wettstein knows this experience will change her. We have one petal, and then we have two, and still, with every new petal we see a new part of the flower. “When we start off as people-it’s almost like petals of a flower. Like right now, in this moment, I feel like I’ve never been so much of Bryce before,” Wettstein told me Sunday, after her final. It’s more about how she can squeeze every last drop of growth out of the experience. The ceiling can’t be distilled down to simple benchmarks- qualify, advance, win. “And we never would ever formulate opinions about ‘we have to go here, we have to go here.’ It was always to find an epiphany in skateboarding.”Įven after the Dew Tour women’s park final, in which Wettstein finished off the podium but nevertheless clinched the Olympics, she maintained that perspective. “The ceiling for us was honestly always just to find that one spark that we’d never stumbled upon before and it was always to find the most captivating thing in the whole world on a skateboard,” Wettstein told me Thursday, prior to clinching her Tokyo bid. When she and Zeuner were eight years old skating around Encinitas, the dream was never about a contest at all. But even as she stands at the precipice of the biggest skateboarding competition of her career, Wettstein is sure this isn’t actually the pinnacle.įor Wettstein, competitive skateboarding isn’t about a goal to be crossed off a list it’s a philosophy.
0 kommentar(er)
