She did it. Poe Pinson, 19, is heading to Paris next month. The Fernandina Beach skateboarder qualified for the 2024 Olympics in Budapest, Hungary, and is a member of the U.S. women’s Olympic skateboard team.
The team also includes Tokyo Olympians Bryce Wettstein (park) and Mariah Duran (street) and Olympic rookies Ruby Lilley and Minna Stess (park) and Paige Heyn and Poe Pinson (street).
The competition runs from noon to 5 p.m. July 28 and will be aired on NBC.
Pinson came close to qualifying in 2021, the first year skateboarding was an Olympic sport; COVID-19 canceled the 2020 games.
“I was the fourth American, and they take the top three,” Pinson said.
But she’s in the top three this year.
“I didn’t even know it was possible to go to the Olympics,” Pinson said. “It’s never really been a goal
of mine, which is kind of insane. I kind of just always liked skating contests. It somehow kind of happened.
“It was never like, goal set in stone, Paris 2024, that’s where I’m going. There were a few contests where I was skating Olympic qualifiers, and I didn’t even know they were Olympic qualifiers.”
She almost skipped the qualifier in Shanghai, China, too.
“I was so over it, I almost didn’t go,” Pinson said. “I’m just so over the contest scene. It was just costing me more than it was benefitting me, and it was overlapping with trips I would rather be on.
“It’s kind of always been a thing, too, the less I care, the better I do.”
But, qualifying for the Olympics has reignited her passion to compete.
“I’m pretty excited now,” Pinson said. “I’m not sure if I want to keep doing Olympic events after. “It will be just super dope because a lot of my friends qualified, too, so I’m super excited.”
Pinson, who placed 11th in Budapest, said there was a ceremony after the finals to announce the Olympic qualifiers, but she was pretty confident she had qualified.
“I was told the day before to bring my Team USA jack-et,” she said.
Her father, Kenny, wasn’t in Budapest, but he realized Pinson had qualified from the points system.
“It was very much in her favor,” he said. “She didn’t go to Dubai. She didn’t go to Switzerland because of injuries. She had to make Shanghai and Budapest.
“She missed about three big Olympic qualifiers, so she feels kind of lucky she even made it in the running.”
Pinson placed fourth in Shanghai, but still didn’t qualify.
“Shanghai is where she jumped up and became ninth in the world,” her father said. “That was a good finish for her. She didn’t medal, but she was close.
“She was just on top of her game, and I knew she was on top of her game. It’s beautiful to watch her per-form now. Her tensity and her joy.”
“Shanghai put me in position,” Pinson said.
Pinson was a toddler when she took up the sport.
“She first stepped on a skateboard at age 2 in the neighborhood where we lived,” her father said. “She went over this little plastic ramp. I held her hand as she indulged. At 2 years old, you couldn’t just turn her loose.
“For her fourth birthday, she wanted to go to the skatepark. That’s how our journey really began. She was doing some amazing things on that skateboard early on.”
Her father put a tennis racket in her hand about the same time she stepped on the skateboard, but the latter won out.
“I would take her for a stroll in the carriage, like a little bicycle carriage that I could run behind,” her father said. “She would say, ‘Dada, skateboarders.’ And, I wouldn’t see them or hear them anywhere. And sure enough, here they would come around the corner.
“She may have had her ears closer to the ground in the carriage and could pick up the sound through the woods or something, but it was amazing. She had radar out.”
Her father said he never dreamed back then Pinson would be competing for an Olympic medal.
“At the time, it doesn’t strike you,” he said. “Then you realize, this was momentum as a movement to where she was going in life."
She was talking Nike sponsorships at just 5 or 6 years old and had her first sponsor, the former Pipeline surf shop, at the age of 9, her father said.
Pinson started competing at age 6 at the Fernandina Skatepark at Main Beach.
"She was untouchable at the local level," her dad said.
Although Pinson has traveled the world competing, this will be her first trip to France.
"This will be the first time for her on so many levels," her father said.