Daiki Ikeda
Daiki Ikeda, now 16, earned a surprise silver medal in his rookie X Games appearance at Chiba 2022. What made it better was being part of a Japanese podium sweep; he placed between longtime friends and mentors Yuto Horigome (gold) and Sora Shirai. Ikeda met both skaters more than 10 years ago, at the Shin-Yokohama Skateboard Park in Yokohama, Kanagawa, just outside of Tokyo. “I was really happy to be on the podium with Yuto and Sora, two of the top skaters in the world and two skaters I’ve always looked up to, while representing our home country in front of our home fans,” Ikeda says, with a translation assist from his Wasserman agent, Dai Sagiura. “I hope that it made everyone in Japan as excited to see that go down as it was for me to be a part of it.”
