TOKYO —

On the Olympic podium, three teenage girls — 13, 13 and 16 — with weighty gold, silver and bronze medals around their young necks, rewards for having landed tricks on their skateboards that most kids their age only get to see on Instagram.

After decades in the shadows of men's skateboarding, the future for the sport's daring, trailblazing women suddenly looked brighter than ever at the Tokyo Games on Monday.

It's anyone's guess how many young girls tuned in to watch Momiji Nishiya of Japan win the debut Olympic skateboarding event for women, giving the host nation a sweep of golds in the street event after Yuto Horigome won the men's event.

But around the world, girls trying to convince their parents that they, too, should be allowed to skate can now point to the 13-year-old from Osaka as an Olympic-sized example of skateboarding's possibilities.

The silver went to Rayssa Leal, also 13 — Brazil's second silver in skateboarding after Kelvin Hoefler finished second on Sunday in the men's event.

The women's bronze went to Funa Nakayama of Japan.

The event was celebrated as a win for women by many of the 20 competitors.

The field included Leticia Bufoni of Brazil, whose board was snapped in two by her dad when she was a kid to try to stop her from skating. There was a Canadian, Annie Guglia, who didn't see any other girls skate during her first two years on her board.

And there were plenty of others for whom the Olympic competition felt like a light at the end of a long tunnel.

"It's going to change the whole game," U.S. skater Mariah Duran said. "This is like opening at least one door to, you know, many skaters who are having the conversations with their parents, who want to start skating.

"I'm not surprised if there's probably already like 500 girls getting a board today."

At the Tokyo Olympics, it’s best to distinguish salad grinds from stalefish.Not tasty Japanese delicacies, but choice morsels from the rich lexicon of skateboarding. The new Olympic sport — competition starts Sunday — comes with a language all of its own.For skaters, the jargon these athletes use to describe their acrobatic tricks allows them to understand each other, regardless of where they're from. An ollie, for example, is an ollie in Paris, Portland or Perth.“You can meet friends skateboarding really fast because of that,” says U.S. skater Alexis Sablone. “Even if you can't say much of anything else, you can still skate together and cheer each other on (because) you know the names of the tricks.”Skate-speak saves time, too. Far easier to say “ollie” than “skating's basic trick where the athlete makes the board take off by pushing down hard on its tail and, once airborne, then levels it out before landing.”And a nollie? Basically the same trick, with the take-off impulsion applied via the nose. Nose. Nollie. Get it? There's a logic to much of the lingo. Olympic fans will be speaking skating in no time at all.The ABCsIn the “street” competition, skaters will rattle over stairs, rails, ledges and other urban furniture. The men go Sunday, followed by the women, including Sablone, on Monday.The 20 contestants will be judged for their skills and style over two runs of 45 seconds and five individual tricks. The top eight then go again in the final. In the “park” competition, in week two, skaters will roll around a giant, feature-filled bowl.Some, like Sablone, skate “goofy,” with right foot forward, as opposed to left-foot forward “regular” skaters. Unless, of course, they skate "switch,” riding against their natural preference. Either way, they'll need stunts that are “gnarly” — both risky and amazing.Talking the talkSometimes, the names of tricks tell their story. Scraping one or both “trucks” — the sturdy axles on the underside of the board — along a rail, curb or other obstacle is a “grind," evoking the screech of metal on metal or metal on concrete.But it's a “slide” when the surface doing the scraping is the wooden board itself, including its mid-section between the wheels ("boardslide"), the underside of the nose ("noseslide"), or tail ("tailslide").Also somewhat self-explanatory are names of some tricks that include degrees of rotation. Like the “frontside 180 ollie,” with skater and board rotating half a turn whilst airborne, or doing a full rotation for the “frontside 360 ollie."And there are all sorts of “grabs,” clutching the skateboard in mid-air with a hand. The stalefish, grabbed between the heels, is one.From there, the variations are almost endless.What's in a name?Some tricks pay homage to their creators. The 360-rotated “caballerial,” ridden backwards, is named after Steve Caballero. The salad grind owes a debt to the surname of skater Eric Dressen, which sounds like the dressings that go on salad. That play on words inspired the name.When it comes to naming tricks, “there are no rules,” says Greg Poissonnier, who'll be commenting on Olympic skateboarding for French TV and contributed to an illustrated guide, or “tricktionary,” of skating stunts.“Sometimes, it's just what they called it at the moment it happened," he says. “They're like, ‘We’ve done this, now what are we going to call it?' And they give it a name.”