One American gold in 11 skate finals: who actually won the XGL season?

Three days under the New Orleans dome, eleven skate finals, and a final standing decided by ten points. XC New York took the title, everybody's known that since Sunday night. But count the podiums back one by one and you land on something the press release skips: out of the eleven skate finals held at the Caesars Superdome, exactly one winner was American. One. In a league built by X Games, bankrolled in dollars, run inside an NFL stadium.

The only American to strike gold did it three times

His name is Tom Schaar, he's 26, and he was the oldest rider on the vert deck. Gold in park. Gold in vert. Gold in park best trick. Silver in vert best trick. Four podiums in one weekend, at an age where the circuit politely files you under veteran.

Here's the part that stings stateside: his third career park gold puts him in a club of four in thirty-one years of X Games. Before him, only Chris Senn, Rodil de Araújo and Pedro Barros had stacked three or more titles in that discipline. Schaar didn't just save face — he put down the weekend of a career. Pull him off the deck and the United States walks out of its own championship with zero skate finals won out of eleven.

The rest of the board went everywhere else. Japan for Ginwoo Onodera, Momiji Nishiya and Mizuho Hasegawa. Australia for Chloe Covell and Mia Kretzer. Great Britain for Sky Brown. Brazil for Gui Khury. Nine different winners across eleven finals, and one American passport in the whole lot.

Ginwoo Onodera, 16, and a three-peat nobody's pulled off since 2013

Men's street final delivered the loudest tell of the weekend. Ginwoo Onodera wins, again. Third straight gold in the discipline — you have to go back to Nyjah Huston and his four in a row to find better. He also becomes the second skater ever to take three street golds in a single calendar year, after Huston in 2013. Onodera was five years old at the time.

Behind him, Toa Sasaki takes silver for his first X Games podium, and Juni Kang bronze — fifth podium in five street starts, riding on a trashed right wrist all weekend. Three spots, three skaters raised in Asia. The marquee street final, the one that packs the stands of a covered football stadium, didn't put a single American on the box.

The individual standings say the opposite of the club standings

This is where the first XGL season gets genuinely weird. X Games publishes two tables: clubs, and athletes — that individual ranking the league sold all season long as its MVP race. The two don't tell the same story.

• 1. Mizuho Hasegawa680 pts

  XC Tokyo — gold in vert, silver in park, bronze in vert best trick off the New Orleans weekend alone

• 2. Tom Schaar620 pts

  XC Los Angeles — 26 years old, the only American to win a skate final at the Superdome

• 3. Gui Khury610 pts

  XC São Paulo — eighth straight gold in vert best trick, and his club finishes last

• 4. Mia Kretzer520 pts

  XC Los Angeles — 11 years old, picked 39th out of 40 in the draft, ends up 4th scorer in the league

• 5. Juni Kang500 pts

  Free agent — never drafted, never tied to a club, fifth in the individual standings

• 6. Ginwoo Onodera470 pts

  XC New York — top scorer on the champion club, and only sixth in the league

• 8. Chloe Covell400 pts

  XC New York — No. 1 draft pick, eighth on total points, and still the one who decided the title

Look at that again. The champion club's best rider sits sixth. The club that lost by ten points has the top scorer in the entire league. And Chloe Covell, the outright No. 1 draft pick, finishes eighth on cumulative points — even though it was her Saturday night gold, paired with Momiji Nishiya's silver, that swung 180 points in one shot and handed New York the title. We already broke down why she scares the circuit: she scores when it counts, not when it just looks good.

An American league, a field that isn't American anymore

The XGL is built on the 2026 draft: 40 athletes split across four city clubs, over a hundred free agents, jerseys, booths, merch. The NBA model bolted onto skateboarding. Back in June, X Games even sold the São Paulo club to an Emirates-based fund, Summit Ventures, with Bob Burnquist installed as general manager. A skate franchise changing hands before its first season is even over.

On-course result for that sold-off club run by a Brazilian legend: dead last, 2 350 points, despite Gui Khury's eighth straight gold in vert best trick. And the Los Angeles club, fielding the league's second and fourth scorers, finishes third. The format rewards the right gold at the right moment, not consistency across three stops. You can defend that — it's exactly what produced that ten-point gap. But own what it says.

So who actually won this season?

Straight answer: Mizuho Hasegawa. 680 points, first in the league's individual standings, well clear of Tom Schaar (620) and Gui Khury (610). In New Orleans alone she pulls gold in vert, silver in park and bronze in vert best trick — three podiums from three finals entered. And her club, XC Tokyo, loses the title by ten points. The best skater of the season goes home without a banner.

Second answer, broader, and the one that matters going forward: this season was won by a generation that isn't American and isn't 20 yet. Onodera 16, Covell 16, Mia Kretzer 11 — picked 39th out of 40 in the draft, she ends up fourth scorer in the league with a fakie body varial 720 nobody had ever landed before her. The Superdome crowned a New York club and a field that's Japanese, Australian, Brazilian, Korean, Spanish. That's the real result of season one.

And for anyone who doubted the format: across three stops — Sacramento, Chiba, New Orleans — the league produced a ten-point gap on a 2 640-point total. Our Sacramento results already had Australia taking over. No individual circuit has ever held that kind of tension over a full season. The format works. It just doesn't crown the people who paid for it.

What's next: September 16

The XGL summer season is a wrap. Next on the league's calendar is the winter draft, set for Wednesday, September 16, 2026 at Cosm in Los Angeles — four winter clubs, ski and snowboard, same pick-'em machinery. On the summer side, if you want to run the whole thing back hour by hour, our schedule in French time keeps the exact running order of the finals.

A club league that crowns New York while the top scorer rides for Tokyo: fair format or broken format? Drop your take in the comments ↓

We cover the full season of major skate contests on nosk8.com — results, wrap-ups, and the numbers nobody else bothers to recount.

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