TOKYO -- Three teenager girls aged 13-13 and 16 stood on the Olympic podium, adorned with heavy gold, silver, and bronze medals. These are rewards for landing tricks on skateboards that TikTok doesn't allow them to see.After decades of being in the shadows, men's skating has seen a brighter future thanks to the Tokyo Games on Monday.It is impossible to guess how many girls tuned in to see Momiji Nishiya, a Japanese skateboarder, win the first Olympic event for women. This gave the host nation three golds in the street event after Yuto Horiome won Sunday's men's.However, around the globe, girls who want to convince their parents to allow them to skate can point to Osaka's 13-year old as an example of the Olympic-sized possibilities of skateboarding.Nishiya is a champion of few words. "Simply delighted" is how she described herself. She let her board speak for herself, riding the rails higher than she is. She told her mother she would celebrate with a Japanese yakiniku barbecue dinner.Rayssa Leal, 13 years old, won the silver. This is Brazil's second-place finish in skateboarding after Kelvin Holler was second in the men's competition.Both Nishiya, Leal were the youngest medalists in their respective countries. Funa Nakayama, 16 years old, of Japan won the bronze.Leal stated, "Now I can convince all of my friends to skateboard everywhere along with me,"Momiji Nishiya, a thirteen-year-old Japanese skateboarder, won the inaugural Olympic event for women. Rayssa Leal from Brazil, a 13-year-old, took silver. Funa Nakayama (16 years old), from Japan won bronze. Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesLeal was 7 years old when she first captured skateboarding's attention with an Instagram video of her trying, and landing, a jump down three flights of stairs in a dress with angel wings.She said, "Skateboarding can be for everybody."However, this has not always been the case for young girls. Even among the 20 pioneering female athletes who rode the ramps, rails and ledges at Ariake Urban Sports Park, that was not always the case.Leticia Bufoni from Brazil was in the field. Her dad snapped her board in half when she was little to try and stop her skating.She was 10.She recalled, "I cried for hours." He believed girls shouldn't be able to skate, as he'd never seen one.Bufoni joked, half-jokingly, that it was harder to get him to stop than qualifying for the Tokyo Games."So, I want be the girl that little girls can say to their parents, 'She can ski. I want to be like her ,''' Bufoni.Annie Guglia from Canada stated that she never saw any girls skate in her first two years of riding her board. At 13 years old, the first contest she entered had no category for women, so organizers had a hard time creating one.Guglia, 30 said, "And I won because I was alone." "We have made a lot of progress."Skaters predict that the women's team at the Olympics in Paris in 2024 will be more talented and have more tricks than the men. This is based on their foundations in Tokyo.Mariah Duran, a U.S. skater, said that "it's going to transform the whole game." This is like opening up at least one door to many skaters, who are having conversations with their parents about starting skating."I don't think it's surprising that there are probably like 500 girls who have a board."Nishiya will be going places with her daughter. She stated that she hopes to attend the Paris Games and win.Nishiya stated, "I want to become famous." But first -- barbecue.Her delighted mom didn't take much convincing.She said, "I will definitely take her."
