Mesa's Jagger Eaton to be part of the relay team for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics

It was a ceremony that would make Hollywood proud.

With movie star Tom Cruise descending on the Stade de France in Saint-Denis as Ethan Hunt and taking the Olympic flag from seven-time Olympic medalist Simone Biles before hopping on a motorcycle and riding out of the stadium, through Paris and to a waiting cargo plane, all eyes are now on Southern California as the countdown begins to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

Helping the countdown begin? Mesa native and skateboarder Jagger Eaton, who remains one of the faces of Team USA. Eaton just won a silver medal in men’s street skateboarding at the 2024 Paris Olympics, the second Olympic medal for the 23-year-old.

As part of the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics, the Olympic flag was passed from the current host city to the next. After Cruise skydived over Los Angeles and decorated the “OO” of the famous “Hollywood” sign with the Olympic rings, the flag was passed to mountain biker Kate Courtney, who rode it down to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and presented it to track and field legend Michael Johnson.

Johnson ran with the flag before handing it to Eaton, who skated with it to Venice Beach. A live concert featuring Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Billie Eilish and the Red Hot Chili Peppers awaited Eaton and the crowd following him. The Paris 2024 Olympics were praised for integrating the city’s culture and landscape into the Games themselves, and organizers of Los Angeles 2028 appear to be following in the footsteps of their predecessors.

For Eaton, it’s another page in what is becoming a historic skateboarding career.

At the time, Eaton was the youngest athlete to ever make his X Games debut at age 11. He used to have a reality show on Nickelodeon. In the first year of skateboarding at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Eaton took home the bronze medal while competing on a broken ankle. In the lead-up to Paris, Eaton’s face was hard to miss as it was one of the focal points of the marketing campaign. Eaton nearly won gold as well, coming in just 0.11 points shy of the first-place finisher.

Now, Eaton can say she was part of the relay for Los Angeles 2028, where she will try to qualify for her third Olympic team.

The 2028 Los Angeles Olympics are scheduled for July 14-30.

Logan Stanley is a sportswriter for The Arizona Republic who focuses primarily on high school, ASU and Olympic sports. To suggest ideas for human interest stories and other news, contact Stanley at [email protected] or 707-293-7650. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter:@LSscribe.

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