Pumping is broken and idk why more people aren't talking about it. Make sure you see a "pumping" trick on the bottom left corner of the screen. If you don't then it's broken, restart the game.
This has been an issue since earlier playtests, pumping randomly will just not work at all and the only way to fix it is restarting the game. Overall though yeah, even when it is working it's hard to get the same speed as previous games, which I don't mind too much, it makes the vert skating a bit more challenging because you need to time the pumps right.