SKATEBOARDER ZHENG HAOHAO BECOMES YOUNGEST ATHLETE AT PARIS OLYMPICS

Just five days before her 12th birthday, Chinese skating prodigy Zheng Haohao made her Olympic debut - making her the youngest athlete to ever compete for her country.

When Zheng took the bowl in the skateboarding preliminaries in Paris today, she also became the youngest Olympian to take part in this year's Games.

Born on the day before the closing ceremony of the London Games in 2012, Zheng only started skating after her parents gifted her first skateboard on her 7th birthday - but has been on a steady rise to the top since.

She landed on the international skating scene with a splash when she competed in the Olympic Qualifier Series in Shanghai and Budapest, which saw her rise to a world ranking of 26 and seal her spot in Paris.

The girl from Huizhou, in the southern Guangdong province, is already a superstar in her home country, having been featured on TV channels across China after a jaw-dropping performance at the qualifiers in Budapest in June.

'That moment felt like a dream come true,' Zheng told Chinese media after securing her place in the Paris Games.

Today, small-framed Zheng skated the Place de la Concorde's park bowl like a seasoned pro in her first run and scored a solid 63.19, before the nerves seemingly got the best of her.

Two falls in her second and third runs saw her put up scores of 16.01 and 16.07 respectively, with her best score taken as her final ranking.

Zheng therefore fell short of securing a place for the women's park final alongside Britain's Sky Brown, 16, later today and ultimately placed 18th out of 22, with the best eight advancing to the final.

Ahead of her Olympic debut, Zheng, who has only been skating professional for the past two years, revealed to Chinese media that her reason for starting skateboarding was to 'make new friends and have fun'.

'Competition to me is just to get together with my good friends,' she said in an interview with China Central Television.

'I know over 10 of the world's top 20 skateboarders. It's like we are playing a fun game. Everyone has to show the best they've got.'

But Zheng also insisted that she was competing to win in Paris. Posting to the Chinese social media site, Weibo, the youngster wrote: 'I don't want to put any pressure on myself. I just want to show my best in Paris.'

She added: 'I want to tell the world that, even though I am young, I can skate well. I want to fulfil the dreams many adults have.'

Footage of Zheng's last training session before the preliminaries showed the 11-year-old smiling as she excitedly looked around the then-empty stands.

Before the Games, Zheng's coach Danny Wainwright spoke highly of the skating prodigy, who turns 12 on August 11.

'She has done great and she has worked hard,' Bristol-native Wainwright told Olympics.com.

'She was 43rd, then 20, and then the next contest was 21, so she has done really well,' he added about Zheng jumping from world ranking 43 to 26 under his tutelage.

Wainwright, himself a professional skateboarder who has previously judged top-tier skate competitions, started working with Zheng just before she competed in the Olympic qualifier in Dubai last March.

He revealed that talented Zheng is just as playful as other girls her age. 'We are always like playing jokes on each other. It's like we have the same mental age; we just mess around and have fun,' Wainwright told Olympics.com.

He added that she is studious and loves writing as well as reading English books - while Zheng only lists painting as her hobbies on her official Paris 2024 profile.

Her coach also said that she particularly enjoys checking tricks of training checklists: 'If I make a checklist of all the tricks that she has to do, do those tricks three or five times in a row, she loves it,' he explained.

'I'll have a little clipboard and a pen and a little Excel file printed out, and I say, "I'm going to make one" and she's like, "Make it colourful! Make it colourful!" And she's ticking it off and she's drawing things around it. It's really funny.'

Her mother, Wang Zhe, told Chinese media that her daughter had been athletic from a young age and loved to climb rocks and steps.

She later enjoyed roller skating, which was only overshadowed by her love for skateboarding after her parents presented her with her first board on her 7th birthday.

In 2021, when she was just 8, Zheng was scouted by the head coach of the provincial team in Guangdong, who immediately recognised her talent and put her on the squad.

Zheng went on to win several national competitions before she went on to compete in her first international event in Argentina for the World Skateboarding Tour in 2023.

'She was very young but extremely focused on skateboarding. If she couldn't nail a trick, she would immediately identify the problem and quickly correct it,' Wei Naizhang, Zheng's former coach, told China Daily.

At the Budapest Olympic Qualifier Series in June, Zheng excelled in the first round, scoring 63.49, before making a mistake in the second one and only getting 43.84 points.

Her final round had to be perfect, and the 11-year-old performed a daring 540 spin - a 360-degree spin followed by another of 180 degrees, so almost rotating the board twice - to catapult her into the Paris Games.

While Zheng's performance wasn't enough to get her into the park final at the 2024 Games, her coach Wainwright has high hopes for her future in the sport.

'The way kids learn now, it's crazy. When she really, really finds her feet and she gets stronger, she'll be messing around with things herself and different tricks and she'll develop her style,' he told the official Paris 2024 website.

With Zheng's rise naturally capturing fans' attention, it also alluded to the mammoth 40-year age gap between her and the oldest skateboarder at the Games, Team GB's Andy Macdonald, 51, who will compete in the men's park skateboarding this week.

Even bigger is the 54-year age gap between Zheng and the oldest athlete competing at the Paris Games, 65-year-old Juan Antonia Jimenez Cobo from Spain.

But at 11 years old, Zheng is remarkably not the Olympics youngest ever athlete.

That accolade falls to Greek gymnast Dimitros Loundras, who competed at the Athens Olympics in 1896 at the age of just 10 years old.

The youngest athletes to ever compete at the Olympics

Dimitrios Loundras, 10

Dimitrious Loundras, born on October 6, 1885, in Athens, is not just the youngest ever Olympian but also the youngest ever Olympic medalist.

Competing in the first ever modern Olympic Games in his home city in 1896, Loundras managed to scoop a bronze medal at the tender age of 10 years and 218 days - a truly stunning feat that no one has come close to matching.

After his athletic career ended while he was still a teenager, Loundras went onto become an officer in the Greek Navy and served for three decades, retiring as a Rear Admiral in 1935.

He was compelled back to active service upon the outbreak of World War II and served his country again, eventually retiring for a second time in 1945 as a Vice Admiral.

He passed away on February 15, 1970, a hero of his nation.

Beatrice Huștiu, 11

Romanian figure skater Beatrice Huștiu is the second-youngest Olympic athlete of all time.

Born on September 2, 1956 in Bucharest, Huștiu bore Romania's flag at the 1968 Winter Olympics, held in France's southeastern city of Grenoble.

She launched her bid for Olympic glory aged 11 years and 158 days, but failed to medal at the event and ultimately retired from the sport before turning 20 years old.

Zheng Haohao, 11

China's Zheng Haohao made her Olympic debut in the skateboarding event aged 11 years and 360 days, making her the youngest athlete at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Zheng also became her country's youngest ever Olympian when she took the the bowl in the women's park prelims on Tuesday, August 6.

Luigina Giavotti, 11 - and the Italian Women's Gymnastics Team

Luigina Giavotti was an Italian gymnast born on October 12, 1916.

She competed in the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam at 11 years and 301 days old and stormed to a silver medal along with her fellow gymnasts in the women's team all-around competition.

Giavotti is the youngest female Olympic medalist.

Two of her medal winning teammates were not much older - Ines Vercesi was 12 years and 99 days old, and Carla Marangoni was 12 years and 269 days old when they took to the floor in Amsterdam.

Inge Sørensen, 12

Inge Sørensen, born on July 18, 1924, in Copenhagen, Denmark, was another child prodigy - this time in the pool.

At the age of just 12 years and 24 days, she competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where she won a bronze medal in the 200-metre breaststroke event.

2024-08-06T15:57:33Z dg43tfdfdgfd