Sky Brown Reaches for Olympic Heaven

Sky Brown was born on July 12, 2008. When the Women's Park Skateboarding competitions took place on August 4th and 5th, she was 13 years, 24 and 25 days old, respectively. There have been a few younger participants in the history of the Olympic Games. And some children have even won medals. At the age of thirteen and 268 days, Marjorie Gestring won Olympic gold for the USA at the 1936 Games in Berlin. The Greek gymnast Dimitrios Loundras was only ten years old and 218 when he and his team won the bronze medal in 1896. The South Korean Kim Yoon-mi is currently the youngest Olympic champion, she won gold in the 1994 Winter Games in the short track relay at the age of 13 years and 83 days. And now Sky Brown has done it: In the Women's Park competition, she won the bronze medal, making her the youngest ever female Olympic champion. But even before that, Sky held a record: at the age of ten, she became the youngest professional skateboarder of all time.

• Sky already has a big medal in her nursery: in 2019 she won bronze at the World Championships in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
• From now on, it will be accompanied by the bronze medal of the Olympic Games 2020.

Of course, Sky didn't pick up skateboarding in the neighborhood. Her father is a skateboarder himself. There his daughter stood then already with three years on the board. But he didn't want that at all, her father told Women in the World. "You have a little girl, you want to wrap her in cotton. But this was the one play thing she kept wanting to do." From there, the practice became a no-brainer - even her preschool had a skate park. The family now has its own skate park in its own backyard.

Sky was born in Miyazaki, Japan. Her mother Mieko is Japanese, her father Stu is British. The family first lived only in Japan, then also in the USA. Sky spends half the school year in the country of her birth, and the other half in California. The biggest difference, according to Sky Brown: school lunches. In the U.S., there is a snack time where she can just take her food. In Japan, food is served on plates with no choices - and only those who eat it all are allowed outside. Although the student has her food points in Asia and America with this, she chose Britain as the country she is competing for in Tokyo. Sky justified this by citing the nonchalant attitude of the British Skating Association. She said the British Skating Association told her, "no pressure, just go out there and have fun. "That's why I chose England," she told the BBC.

Skateboarding extraordinaire is obviously not enough for Sky. When she's in California, she heads to the ocean at five in the morning and gets on her surfboard to ride the waves. At the age of seven, she already got her first sponsorship contract here. Sky can also dance. On the junior version of ABC's "Dancing with the stars" - the U.S. edition of Let's dance - she won in December 2018 with her partner J.T. Church. Sky took top honors twice in the finale. The new Olympic sports don't just include skateboarding, surfingwill alsobe part of the Olympic program for the first time.

In each of her video clips Sky shows an infectious cheerfulness. The charming smile, plus witty, even clever sentences - the big corporations would have been stuck in a slumber if they hadn't taken notice of the girl. But they didn't. A contract with Nike here, an energy drink cleverly held up to the camera there: Sky seems well equipped with contracts and will certainly earn good money. Some of her YouTube videos have millions of clicks, and she has over 800,000 subscribers on Instagram. Sky also designs her own skateboards and socks, but part of the proceeds from their sale goes to disadvantaged children. After all.

In May 2020, almost her entire childhood dream career would have been over in one fell swoop. While training in California, she flew out of the half pipe from a high altitude. Sky suffered a fractured skull, and her left arm and hand were also broken. After that fall, critics spoke out for the first time, talking about a childhood sacrificed for a career staged through. Sky didn't seem to see it quite that way. She reported back while still in hospital with a video that has been clicked over two million times. On the anniversary of the accident, she declared, "I feel better than ever."

Who now thinks, such a career can not exist in Germany, is mistaken. Sky has a competitor from Germany in the Olympic competition who is insignificantly older. Lilly Stoephasius qualified for the Olympics at the age of thirteen as well, but at the time of the competition Lilly is "already" 14 years old. Youthfulness is a hallmark of female skateboarding competition.

• The girl is listed in the record books as the first female to successfully land a frontside 540. Sky was just eight years old when she accomplished this.

What goes with the Sky? That's right, Ocean. Ocean Brown is Sky's younger brother by four years. He is nine years old and has practically taken the same development in the slipstream of his older sister. The siblings are sometimes referred to as "skateboard geniuses" in the scene. At the Winter Youth Olympic Games in Lausanne in early 2020, the two already had joint appearances in the show program. Maybe they'll both be skating for medals at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.