The bowl skateboarding competition at the Paris Olympics 2024 will see one of the youngest athletes to compete. Eleven-year-old Chinese athlete, Zheng Haohao, is the youngest Chinese Skateboarding Olympian from the nation.
Born on August 11, 2012 in Guangdong province of southern china, Zheng developed an interest in the sport when she was gifted a skateboard on her seventh birthday, four years ago. While she is the youngest athlete from China to compete in the Olympics, she is not the youngest in the history of the games. The youngest Olympian to ever compete in the games was Dimitrios Loundras, a 10-year-old who participated in the 1896 games.
According to Chinese newspaper South China Morning Post, Zheng, specialises in bowl skateboarding, which involves a hollowed-out area with a series of intricate curves. She trained at a local club and two years later was recruited by the Guangdong provincial team. It was in 2021 when she got to compete at China’s National Games and came in at 14th place.
But, Zheng pushed herself and began competing globally in various world series in 2023. According to Reuters, Zheng qualified for Paris in Budapest when she scored a successful 540 flip, a difficult routine which she tried for the first time in a competition. The 540 flip is when the skater and board spin one and half rotations mid-air.
Skateboarding was first included in the Olympics in the Tokyo Games. However, Zheng is not the first young skater to participate in the competition. At the 2020 Tokyo Games, Japanese skater Kokona Hiraki won a silver medal in the final, at the age of 12.
Zheng will join a number of teenagers at the women’s park event to earn a place in the final, on August 6.
