Nyjah reclaims his throne in São Paulo as Jhank's fall shakes the SLS Super Crown

The 2024 SLS Championship Tour closed its curtain in São Paulo for what turned out to be one of the most emotionally charged Super Crowns in recent memory. After stops in Paris, San Diego, Sydney and Tokyo — plus three APEX best trick events — the season's top-ranked skaters converged on the Ginásio do Ibirapuera on December 14-15 for the biggest prize in street skateboarding.

The format was straightforward but unforgiving. Three spots in the final were reserved for the season's top-ranked skaters — Chris Joslin, Felipe Gustavo, and defending champion Giovanni Vianna. The remaining three came through a preliminary round on December 14th, where Nyjah Huston, Jhanka Gonzalez and Gustavo Ribeiro punched their tickets to join them.

One major absentee: Sora Shirai, the season's heavy favorite, held up in Japan by a visa problem.

A final nobody will forget for the wrong reasons

The six-man final barely got started before everything stopped. During the first trick round, Jhancarlos Gonzalez went down hard — head-first, no hands — and didn't get up on his own. The arena went silent.

Some of his fellow competitors were visibly in tears before eventually returning to the course. Giovanni Vianna, a longtime friend of Jhank's, was the first to step back on the board, landing a 9.1 that seemed as much an act of will as it was skateboarding. Jhank was discharged from the hospital the following day — more scare than permanent damage — but the image of that fall lingered over the rest of the night.

Nyjah closes the door

Once the competition resumed, the level was exactly what you'd expect from a Super Crown final. The decisive moment came down to the last trick of the night. Gustavo Ribeiro had just taken the lead with a 9.5, bringing his total to 36.7. Nyjah Huston, needing exactly a 9.2 to retake first place, dropped a nollie backside flip down the MLK gap and scored precisely that — 9.2, total of 36.8. Championship won.

It was Nyjah's seventh SLS Super Crown title and his first since 2019 — five years between wins, 30 years old, still the most clutch skater on the planet when it matters. Giovanni Vianna took silver in front of his home crowd, a result that hit different given everything that had happened earlier in the night.

São Paulo delivered, as it always does. It just cost more than anyone expected.