Mariah Duran understands better than anyone that there are moments when skateboarding is more about the mind than the body.
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How Does Mariah Duran Chill Before A Big Competition
The 24-year-old Dew Skate Team and Team USA street skater is ranked first among American women and seventh in the world, putting her in good position to make an official bid for this summer’s Tokyo Olympics, where skateboarding will make its debut.
And that’s without even factoring in Duran’s dominant performance at last week’s USA Skateboarding national championships, another official qualifying event, when she finished 90 points ahead of her closest opponent.
The fact that Duran will probably still be considered the best female street skater in the world despite not advancing past the Saturday semifinal at the Dew Tour is a testament to her dominance, despite the fact that she didn’t win any of the 60,000 points up for grabs in the women’s street competition.
Alexis Sablone, the U.S. No. 2 in women’s street, was not either. As of last Sunday’s finals, only Poe Pinson, an American skater, remained among the top eight competitors in the women’s street event.
Handrails, flatrails, gaps, and steps are all examples of obstacles that can be found on a skating street course. Skateboarding’s Olympic qualification procedure, which began on January 1, 2019, was cut short by a global pandemic 18 months ago.
Everybody’s Mental Condition was Tested
Duran informed me on the first day of Dew Tour that “everybody’s mental condition was tested.” She continued, “The mental game is everything.” That, they said, “is what’s going to determine whether you land or not and whether you damage yourself or not.”
The native of Albuquerque, New Mexico, has always known that meditation helps her get into the zone before competitions, and now she says it’s become an integral part of her routine.
The road to the Dew Tour women’s street final was rocky, or more precisely, slippery, this week, so she had to focus on centering herself. The Dew Tour had to deal with something it rarely encounters at its typical home of Long Beach, California: rain, as it was held for the first time in the brand-new Lauridsen Skatepark in Des Moines, Iowa, currently the largest skatepark in the U.S.
Timetable Conflicts Arose Frequently Because of the Weather.
The Dew Tour must accommodate a certain amount of training for each discipline because it is an Olympic qualification event recognised by World Skate. Since Duran had already been seeded, she had to wait longer than the other skaters in the street open qualifications before getting her turn on the track. She spent a week in Des Moines but didn’t get to practise on the street course until the night before the semi-final.
Due to the cancellation of the 2020 event by Covid-19, the 2019 Dew Tour utilised the Olympic “2/5/4” format for its street events, with competitors getting two 45-second runs and five attempts at a single trick. The highest four scores from each run and each individual trick are put together to form the final score. The 2021 gathering was similarly supposed to follow a 2/5/4 format.
For Duran in 2019, this format was a dream come true, as he not only finished first in his semifinal and therefore advanced to the final, but also had the highest single-trick score and was the overall winner.
