Sacrifice.
For his country. For his younger brother Koston. For skateboarding. And for park skating which has meant the world to him but is being dropped for LA28.
There’s going all in, then there’s Jagger Eaton. It is “gold or bust” for what would be his third Olympic Games.
“There’s only one thing left in my life,” USA’s two-time Olympic street medallist Eaton told Olympics.com in a brutally honest interview at the X Games Chiba in Japan earlier this month, when he didn’t mince a word. Authenticity at its finest.
“There’s only one goal left in the Olympics for me and it’s winning gold. And I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that happens in our home country. But yeah, that’s really all that’s left for me.
“I’ve had an amazing Olympic career – to have a third (place) and a second – and it’s changed my life forever and I love it so much. I’m still in love with the process of it. But again, there’s only one goal left.
“Without any internal pressure that I put on myself or any self-pressure, like, it is gold or bust. That’s my entire goal. And again, I’m so grateful for this process. I love, I love the entire road up to LA and making the team that would be in the Village will be something very special.
“But I felt like I should have had gold in Paris. That was the missing goal. And getting second by a tenth of a point lit a fire that I didn’t know I had.
“And so going into LA, yes, there is one goal – it is gold or bust and that is my entire mentality going into this.”
Despite injury-lost 2025: “My stuff is better than it’s ever been”
The year 2025 was challenging for Eaton to say the least.
In March, he tore the anterior talofibular ligament in his left ankle, the ligament which supplies vital stability to the ankle. He underwent a complete repair and couldn’t even walk on the ankle for a while. It wasn’t until December that he was back skating free of restrictions.
Eaton says the ankle no longer feels the same. He has had to reinvent his skating – “more spinning, less flipping,” he says – but ironically, feels he is an improved skater as a result. As if to underline his words, Eaton won this year’s Tampa Pro in April.
Looking back on the torturous nine months of rehab, Eaton said, “It was terrible, it was frustrating. But again, that’s a cost if you’re wondering what the cost is to compete at this level for this long. It’s that those injuries, they catch up with you – they always do.
“It feels tight compared to how it used to be because skateboarders, you kind of have this weird thing where it’s nice that we destroy our ligaments completely because we have a lot of range of motion.
“But the problem is that when they snap you have no stability and you can’t put any weight on it. So all of my ligaments in both of my ankles are basically 90 per cent torn and when one snapped it changed the entire structure of my ankle.
“But again, I feel like that just makes me a better skater. I mean I feel like my runs right now and my stuff is better than it’s ever been. I feel like I’m in the best form of skateboard I’ve ever been.
“And yeah, I think it’s just because when you go through those trials and what you love doing, you end up persevering in a way that you never thought of. And again, these new tricks that I’m doing now and where my skateboarding’s at, I cannot complain.”
read more: https://www.olympics.com/en/news/exclusive-skateboarding-x-games-japan-2026-jagger-eaton-interview
