The entire Australian park skating team has been disqualified from the final Olympic qualifying event after three team members tested positive for COVID.
Words by Nat Kassel.
It’s been a rough couple of days for Australia’s Olympic park skateboarders. The crew had been posted up in San Diego for a few weeks, hitting the skateparks over there and prepping for the Dew Tour in Des Moines, Iowa.
The Dew Tour, which went down over the weekend, was the final park qualifying event before the Olympics in Tokyo on 23 July. But the entire Australian team got disqualified from the comp after one coach and two skaters tested positive for COVID-19.
Charlotte Heath was one of the skaters who tested positive. She posted on Instagram, “Pretty bummed about not being able to compete in Dew Tour in Des Moines this year because I got COVID-19… I have to quarantine for a while now and I was really looking forward to this comp, but at least I got to travel to America and go to all the sick skateparks while I could.”
Charlotte Heath was one of the skaters who unfortunately tested positive for COVID during the Dew Tour in Des Moines, Iowa.
The other skater and coach who contracted COVID preferred not to be identified.
James Karageorgiou, program manager of Skate Australia, explained that after one Australian tested positive, all the park skateboarders were put into isolation and underwent daily tests for COVID.
“They were in isolation for a three-day burst before the competition,” James said. “Everyone was tested every single day and they were negative, negative, negative. Then they let them all compete on day one… The women got to compete. That was all cool, and then the following day, one of the Australians tested positive.”
“The team was told, ‘Get out of this competition venue, go back to your hotel and stay there until we give you further advice.’ They hardly gave us any advice, despite requests around what was going on. They left [the Australian skaters] in there for three days. Then they were like, ‘Nah, we’re not buying this, too many positives,’ and they shut it down.”
No Australians were allowed to compete in the park finals and therefore none got any qualifying points from the event. This meant that some skaters hoping to qualify for the Olympics were unable to win the qualifying points they needed. On the other side of the coin, some Australian skaters were already safely qualified and will be unaffected.
James explained, “We’ve got Keegan Palmer in there. We’ve got Kieran Woolley in the top 20. They’ve got enough points that irrespective of points, they were always going to get through to Tokyo… Keegan is 100 per cent and Kieran is probably 99.9 per cent”
“Then in the women, Poppy [Olsen] is 100 per cent. She’s going. Then we’ve got two others in and around the bubble. So there’s Shanae Collins and Taniah Meyers… We need to wait and see how it all pans out. There’s a possibility that both will qualify, but there’s a possibility that one will miss out. At this point in time, it looks like Shanae is slightly better placed but it’s going to be super, super fine.”
The men’s Australian street skating contenders, Shane O’Neill and Tommy Fynn, were staying in separate accommodation and were still able to compete at Dew Tour. Shane came 8th and Tommy just missed out on making the finals. This means Shane is guaranteed a spot in the Olympics and Tommy will need a good result at the final street qualifying event, which is the World Championships in Rome.
“They weren’t involved in any of this at all,” James explained. “It didn’t compromise them. Tommy skated well and just missed the final and Shane obviously made the final. If Tommy had have made the final that would have gone a long way to booking his ticket to Tokyo, but it’s going to come down to the World Champ’s in Rome now for Tommy.”
In women’s street, Hayley Wilson has already qualified for the Tokyo Olympics.
For now, the Aussie park skaters will be stuck in quarantine in Des Moine, Iowa for the next week or so.
