Australian skateboarder Arisa Trew, 14, takes gold medal in women’s park at Paris Olympics

PARIS – The Olympics strive to introduce new-generation sports to attract eyeballs and on Aug 6, the youngsters showed that age is not an issue when it comes to performing on the world’s biggest sporting stage.

Australia’s Arisa Trew, 14, led a pack of teenagers who swept the podium of the women’s park skateboarding competition in Paris. With her pink knee guards and ponytail, the youngest medallist at these Games sailed through the course to win her country’s first medal in women’s skateboarding.

“It’s really cool because all the girls are pushing skating,” said Trew, who was joined on the podium by Japan’s Cocona Hiraki, 15, who took silver, and Britain’s Sky Brown, 16, who won bronze.

On the high-pressure Olympic stage, the young athletes banded together.

“It’s normal to be nervous at such a big event, but all the girls are cheering each other on, and that helped a lot in terms of relieving stress,” said Hiraki, who started skating when she was five.

Six of the eight finalists in the competition were teens. The youngest athlete to compete in the Paris Olympics, 11-year-old Zheng Haohao of China, took part in the preliminary competition earlier in the day.

“It’s crazy to me to have such young competitors,” said Finland’s Heili Sirvio, a 13-year-old who soaked up media attention at the event.

Echoing Hiraki’s sentiments about competitors forging a strong bond, Trew said of Sirvio: “It was so fun to skate with her today in the final. I love hanging out with her, and watching her skate.”

When it came down to business, however, the Australian nailed a high-risk and high-speed final round in her trademark pink helmet to leap to the top of the rankings, bringing the crowd to their feet at a sun-drenched Place de la Concorde.

Hiraki clinched second to add to the silver she won at the 2020 Tokyo Games when skateboarding was introduced as an Olympic sport, after two typically smooth and high-scoring runs. The Japanese was eclipsed by Trew’s spectacular last routine, finishing on a score of 92.63 and behind her opponent’s 93.18. Brown ended on 92.31.

“I was just thinking on my third round that I had to land it no matter what because I just wanted to secure myself on the podium,” said Trew, who was in third before her final round.

Skateboarding prodigy Brown, who won her first bronze in Tokyo at age 13, is happy to see the progression of skateboarding with her generation. The 16-year-old dislocated her shoulder less than a fortnight ago and performed with heavy strapping in the heats and in the final, with falls in both drawing gasps from the crowd.

“It was definitely a little scary falling on my shoulder,” she said afterwards.

She said the level of women’s skateboarding had risen sharply since Tokyo and praised the role of the Olympics in helping bring attention to the sport.

“The sport overall has grown, more people getting into it, more skate parks,” she added.

“It’s just been really good for the sport... we’ve still got some work to do, but we’re definitely closing the gender gap. I think there’ll be more girls coming in for the next one.” REUTERS, AFP