While most 11-year-olds are busy enjoying summer vacation, Chinese skateboarding prodigy Zheng Haohao is on a different kind of vacation: she’s competing. at the Paris Olympics.
Zheng will make history as the youngest Olympian to represent China (and the youngest athlete at the Games) when she begins the women’s park skateboarding competition on Tuesday, five days before her 12th birthday.
Who is this skateboarding genius? Born one day before the closing ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics, Zheng started skateboarding when her parents bought her a board for her seventh birthday. She was exceptionally talented and, after winning several national championships and tournaments, she soon began competing internationally.
With her petite frame and big smile, she was seen practising this week in the bowl of the Place de la Concorde park, mingling with her competitors under the watchful eye of her coach, Danny Wainwright.
Wainwright, a Bristol-born professional skater with experience judging top-level skate events, began working with Zheng ahead of the Olympic skate qualifiers in Dubai last March. Under his tutelage, Zheng has climbed the rankings from 43rd to 26th.
As a child, Zheng preferred uneven surfaces where she could climb rocks and steps — early signs that she would become an adrenaline junkie, albeit one with an inquisitive mind and an adventurous streak.
“She’s very academic,” Wainwright told the official Paris 2024 website. “She loves studying, she loves writing, and she loves English study books. So if I make a list of all the tricks she has to do, and she repeats them three or five times in a row, she loves it. I have a clipboard, a pen, and a little Excel file printed out, and I say, ‘I’m going to do one,’ and she says, ‘Make it colorful! Make it colorful!’ And she’s checking it off and drawing things around it. It’s really fun.”
Ironically, in his official speech Paris 2024 In his profile, Zheng lists painting as his only hobby, but when you’ve been a pro skater for the past two years, there probably isn’t much time left for anything other than working on new tricks.
Zheng shocked the world at the Budapest Olympic Qualifying Series earlier this year when he performed a 540 spin, a skateboard trick that consists of a 360-degree spin followed by a 180-degree spin (the board spins almost a full rotation twice).
Skateboarding was a huge hit when it was added to the Olympic programme in Tokyo, with many highlighting the endearing camaraderie on display between competitors. Britain’s Sky Brown has often mentioned that some of her best friends are those she competes and travels the world with, and for Zheng, it’s no different.
“For me, the competition is just about getting together with my good friends,” she said in an interview with China Central Television. “I know more than 10 of the top 20 skaters in the world. It’s like we’re playing a fun game. Everyone has to show their best.”
The young woman’s participation in the Games is likely to provoke mixed reactions, even though her involvement is entirely within the rules. There is no specific age limit for participating in the Olympic Games. Instead, each international sports federation must decide the minimum age for competing on the Olympic stage. Gymnasts, for example, must be at least 16 years old, boxers must be at least 18, but there is no minimum age for competing in surfing or skateboarding.
Competitors in the latter discipline are therefore often extremely young and brave, although Britain’s Andy McDonald is gloriously challenging the status quo of skateboarding. At the ripe old age of 51 (and four decades older than Zheng), he will compete in the men’s park skateboarding category on Wednesday.
For youngsters, the rewards can be big. Brown, who became the youngest athlete to land a sponsorship deal with Nike and has more than 1.3 million social media followers on Instagram, topped the list of richest Britons at the Tokyo Olympics, with the 13-year-old estimated to have earned £3.5 million from those Olympics alone.
One wonders whether Zheng’s Instagram following (he currently has a modest total of 987) will increase after the Games. After finishing 23rd at his World Championships debut in Rome last year, he’s unlikely to feature among the medals, but given what he’s achieved in his relatively short life, this young skate star knows no bounds.