LIKE most kids with a skateboard under one arm, Nyjah Huston has occasionally wasted cash.

So was it the neck tattoo?

Or maybe those diamonds in each ear?

“Nah,” he grins, “the Lamborghini”.

Huh?

“Cost me $340,000,” the US skater continues. “But I’d had some good years, felt I deserved it.

“I’ve sold it now though.

“Same deal my Audio R8.

“I’m still driving a Mercedes though ... I’m a car guy, I guess.”

Sydneysiders, meet Nyjah Imani Huston.

Aka Soul Crusher.

A wiry, Californian native who, standing this particular Thursday afternoon by a makeshift skate park inside US Bank Stadium, is exactly why The Sunday Telegraph has travelled 14,000km to visit, over three days, this completely overhauled home of the Minnesota Vikings.

For if you want to understand X Games, they say, find Huston.

Nobody willing to guarantee an interview with the megastar all ink and backwards flat cap.

Still, you have to try

For more than once being the youngest X Games competitor ever, or now the world’s highest-paid skater, Huston is also the undeniable poster boy for this annual sporting event born in 1995 -- ironically, only a few months after he was.

At 23, the popular American not only boasts $8 million in earnings, or the schmichest of car collections, but a Nike shoe range, sponsorships with Doritos and Mountain Dew, even 2.4 million Instagram followers.

Which doesn’t yet put him in the same stratosphere as the legendary Tony Hawk, whose $190 million fortune tops the list of richest skateboarders alive.

But sitting at No.20, geez, it’s no small thing.

Yet how many Australian sports fans could pick him out?

Indeed, when we mention the new Olympic sports of skateboarding and BMX, how many of us still picture kids smoking the green stuff by a graffitied concrete bowl?

C’mon, it’s OK.

When it comes to extreme sports, we Aussies are late to the party.

“But when the X Games arrives this October (in Sydney),” Wagga motocross rider Jackson Strong enthuses, “I know, finally, people will realise how good we are”.

Gold Coast BMX star Kyle Baldock agrees, convinced Australia’s debut event can eventually grow into “pathway programs for my sport like are in NRL”.

And why not?

Of the 230 athletes competing at X Games, Australia sits behind only the US for numbers.

None of which surprises Bob Burnquist, the ESPN commentator and skate legend sitting three places above Huston on that rich list.

“Oh, Australia’s been producing incredible talent for years,” says the man who traded a soccer ball for his first skateboard aged 10, then won 14 X Games golds.

“And, sure, some Aussies may still be surprised by the money now being made riding a ‘toy’. But is it any more surprising than earning millions for hitting golf balls?”

And as we ponder that, a text arrives: Huston is practicing on the street course.

By the time we find him, the American’s plain white shirt sweated through -- yet OK to chat if things are kept brief.

At which point, we consider a gag about NRL media protocols ... but who can risk it with the clock already ticking?

And with Huston, time is precious.

That, and money.

“And prizemoney, it’s only going to increase,” says the son of an estranged Rastafarian father who once shifted his family to a remote Puerto Rican farm for two years.

“But given we’re pushing boundaries, we deserve to make money.”

Indeed, of the past seven X Games, Huston has won six golds.

Won medals in eleven straight.

Which matters when even your earliest pay cheques, aged 10, “were for five grand”.

Yet more than being rich, Huston is consistent.

Dominant.

And gritty enough to still know knee pain from a crash seven years ago.

But what is X Games if not pushing the limits of possibility?

Take Baldock, who has broken more than 20 bones in his lifetime. Or Cronulla skateboarder Jake Brown, who once fell so heavily from five storeys on the Big Air ramp, both shoes exploded from his feet on impact.

And now come October, Huston is bringing it all to Sydney.

Ironically, Australia was the home of his professional debut.

“I was 10,” he recalls. “Placed second at the Globe World Cup. Ever since Australia’s been among my favourite places to travel.”

But is he surprised X Games is heading to a city where the event remains largely unknown?

“Not at all,” he shrugs. “If anything, I’m surprised it’s taken us this long”.