Skater Cory Juneau Is Bringing His Unique Flow to Tokyo
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Cory Juneau awaits his turn in the bowl at a skate park in Encinitas, California, one of his go-to spots when he's home in San Diego. He peers over the lip. "Homie's teaching the young locals how to skate," he says. An instructor is working with a kid—a grom, in skaterspeak—no older than six and wearing pads on every limb. The grom wipes out. This will take a minute, so Juneau kills time by riding along the bowl's perimeter. He lands a kickflip but fudges the heelflip that follows. "My legs are so sore," he says, slightly embarrassed. It's late May, and he just got back from competing in the Dew Tour, as in Mountain Dew, in Iowa, where he placed eighth. But it's no big deal, since he's already a lock for a spot on Team USA for the Tokyo Games.
Juneau, twenty-two, is known for his flowing style atop a skateboard and his seemingly effortless execution of the most difficult tricks. He prefers skating to walking. If he's walking, he might trip. He's ranked second in the world in park skateboarding, which takes place in what are essentially wonky swimming pools without water. Street skating, the more popular of the two styles, incorporates fixtures found in public settings, like stairways and cement ledges; both styles debut this year as official Olympic events.
Juneau will start training in earnest for his own Olympic debut soon. Today he's just trying to keep things mellow. When it's his turn, he drops into the bowl and pulls off a near-flawless frontside boardslide. "I'm pretty stoked on that one," he admits with a wide-open grin. The grom slides back in on his butt.
Juneau grew up in San Diego, where skate culture traces back six decades, and trekked to its skate parks to absorb greatness right out of the cement. He was surrounded by accomplished skaters—"legends," he calls them. Shaun White, the snowboarder and three-time Olympic gold medalist, began skating the local parks when he was six. Tony Hawk lives up the road. "I was taught when you do a trick, you do it right," Juneau says. His dad, Kirk, a lifelong surfer, would drive Juneau and his older brother to the desert each weekend to race dune buggies and dirt bikes and on weeknights accompanied them to the skate park a few blocks from their house. They were aggressive kids, Juneau says, skating all their anger out before returning home to do homework and crash into bed. He got hooked on the way the everyday anxieties in his head would clear out as he focused on new tricks. While most kids swarmed the street sections, ollieing down flights of stairs and grinding handrails, Juneau opted for the mostly kid-free half-pipe. He mastered it before he hit double digits. At thirteen, he was competing against pros.
San Diego skate culture sticks with him. In the lead-up to competition in 2018, Juneau tested positive for THC and was suspended by the U. S. Anti-Doping Agency—the only Olympic skateboarder (so far) with that dubious honor. He swears he's been "trying to stay on the straight path" ever since. He even has a nutritionist, who advised he cut out gluten, dairy, and soy. It's working; he feels loads better. He probably won't hit the gym, since skateboarders can't stay flexible if they're jacked. He's sanguine about the international spotlight he's about to step into. As long as he puts in enough hours on his board ahead of time, he says, "there's nothing to be nervous about." The closest thing he has to a coach is his dad, who watches his competitions on TV and calls afterward to give him nonsense feedback like "Flip your board in the air."
In Encinitas, Juneau watches as the instructor holds a skateboard into the bowl like it's a rescue ladder and urges the grom to one-two-three-jump! and grab on so he can haul him out. It's Juneau's turn once again. He places the tail of his board on the lip, balances on the back truck, and hovers for a second, his lanky frame lost in baggy light-wash jeans and a black hoodie screen-printed with a portrait of Biggie Smalls. Then, in one fluid motion, he leans forward and chases his shadow straight down.
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