Qualifying points for Tokyo 2020 are on offer at the four-day event, which also serves as the seeding competition for all remaining Olympic qualifiers next year, with the exception of the 2020 World Championships.

A total of 160 athletes – 99 men and 61 women – entered the event at Parque Cândido Portinari.

American White, a three-time Olympic champion, was a skateboarder before becoming a snowboarder.

He has claimed two Summer X Games gold medals in the skate vert discipline and, although that will not feature at Tokyo 2020, White is hoping he can transition to park skating.

Hirano finished second behind White at Pyeongchang 2018 to add to his silver medal from Sochi 2014, and is keen to represent host country Japan at Tokyo 2020.

While the 20-year-old has been entered into the World Skate Park World Championship by the Japan Skating Federation, White has been granted a wildcard entry and faces a battle to secure one of the three US spots for Tokyo 2020.

The bar will be raised for the two crossover stars in the quarter-finals, where the 16 men ranked from five to 20 in the World Skate Park rankings will join the party, with the top four – including Brazil's defending champion Pedro Barras – waiting to start competition at the semi-final stage.

Tom Schaar and Zion Wright, both funded members of the US national skateboard team, also took part in the open qualifying,

Schaar finished top on 84.45 points, but Wright missed the top 16 qualifiers by two places with 75.11.

Hirano was fifth on 79.50, and White claimed 13th place on 77.37.

The women’s open qualifying was topped by four US athletes, with the world-ranked 24 Jordan Santana scoring 46.85, and Arianna Carmona, world-ranked 22, totalling 45.48.

Among the 16 seeded women coming into play in the quarter-finals will be Britain's 11-year-old Sky Brown, currently world-ranked nine.

The youngster, who has a British father and Japanese mother and was born in Japan, is hoping to represent Great Britain at Tokyo 2020, where skateboarding will feature for the first time.

In the quarter-finals and semi-finals, there will be four heats of eight and five riders per heat, respectively.

Each skater gets three runs of 45 seconds with the best run counting, but the clock stops upon a fall and the run is over with no restarts allowed.

The only change in the final, which is a single heat of eight riders, sees the number of 45-second runs per rider increased to four.