Yuto Horigome, 2019: why he ditched Blind for his idol's brand?

January 2019. Yuto Horigome was 20, had three Street League wins in the bag, and more board brands. He just left Blind, the company that turned him pro. Four months later, he reappears under a brand that didn’t exist yet: April, launched by Shane O’Neill.

On paper, it’s a resume line. In reality, it’s a bet. And two years later, it’s with an April board under his feet that he wins the first-ever street Olympic title. So why ditch a solid brand for one that hadn’t even dropped a single board?

January 2019: he leaves Blind, the Video Days brand

Blind isn’t just any sticker. The brand was founded in 1988 by Mark Gonzales, and it released Video Days in 1991, filmed by Spike Jonze, with a dash of Guy Mariano. You might not know the name, but every pro you follow has seen it.

Yuto joined the team in 2015, after filming in Los Angeles with Micky Papa, a Blind rider. He’s 16, just moved to California, and is doing his high school online. In 2017, he shut down For Days, the brand’s video. Thrasher summed up his part in one line: he makes the impossible way too easy.

But by 2019, Blind had been off the skaters’ radar for a while. The brand was under Dwindle Distribution, a distributor linked to an investment fund, Transom Capital. Yuto left in January. No public clash, no goodbye video. Just a name that vanished from the site.

May 2019: 14 days, 2 vids, a brand that’s born

Shane O’Neill had been cooking his move for a while. On June 8, 2018, the Aussie announced he was leaving Primitive to start his own brand. Almost a year, nothing. Then everything dropped in two weeks.

On May 5, 2019, Shane finally dropped the name: April. On May 16, Nike SB dropped a 1 minute 55 second clip titled “April Skateboards Pro Part” on his channel. The rider? Yuto. Three days later, on May 19, Thrasher released “Introducing April Skateboards,” the video that showcases the ten riders on the team.

Picture the scene from a viewer’s perspective. One May evening, the notification hits your phone. A brand no one’s seen a board from, and already a pro part. You launch it, flip the screen to landscape, and after ten seconds you rewind to make sure you caught everything. Today, the video has over 1.3 million views.

Who paid, who filmed: Nike SB behind the showroom

Check out where the drop comes from. Not on April’s channel, which barely exists yet. On Nike SB’s. Shane and Yuto both ride for the brand at the split, and it’s that channel that gives the skate brand its first showcase. The video description points straight to the launch clip on Thrasher.

This is the real deal of 2019. A small skate brand can’t afford to spotlight a rider alone. A shoe giant can. Nike SB puts its channel to work for the launch, and April lands a rider who’s already crushing global podiums.

The name of the filmer for this 2019 drop isn’t in the description. The next one is. In 2021, April dropped The Yuto Show, three minutes filmed on the VX1000 by Kevin Perez. In the credits for the extra footage, one name pops out: Eric Koston. The dude who was on his childhood idol list ends up behind the camera for him.

The timeline

What that sparked: 2 Olympic golds in 5 years

The story moves fast. Right after signing, still in 2019, Yuto snags two golds and a bronze at the X Games in Shanghai and Minneapolis. He wraps up the year with a silver at the World Championships in São Paulo, behind Nyjah Huston. By June 2019, World Skate’s Olympic ranking already has him in second place, with 62,480 points.

Then Tokyo, summer 2021. At home. He strings together 9.03, 9.30, 9.35, and caps it off with a nollie backside 270 scored 9.50. Total 37.18, the first Olympic street title in history. A year later, he wins the first X Games held in Japan, in Chiba.

In 2024 in Paris, he does it again at the Place de la Concorde. Two Games, two titles. We covered that double in detail in our profile of his two Olympic titles.

So why did he follow his idol?

We haven’t found any interview where Yuto explains his 2019 choice. But the facts speak loud. When he’s 12 and decides to go pro, he names his heroes: Mike Carroll, Gino Iannucci, Eric Koston, Guy Mariano, Shane O’Neill, Paul Rodriguez. Shane is on the list.

The answer, here it is: April offered him what no other established brand could give. Riding for a skater he admired as a kid, inside a company owned by that skater, and becoming a pillar from day one, with his own stake to kick things off. At Blind he inherited a legend that belonged to a fund. At April he was writing his own.

And the loop closes on its own. In 2024, the April team includes Guy Mariano, another name from his childhood list, the same guy who had a stake in Video Days at Blind. You also find Rayssa Leal and Chloe Covell. Yuto didn’t join a brand. He helped build one that now attracts the people he used to watch on repeat.

Today, when a young pro turns down a big contract to ride with the skater who inspired him, there’s a good chance he’s thinking back to May 2019. Yuto proved you can chase your idol and end up with two Olympic golds. The bet was solid. And it still is.