The women's Park preliminaries for skateboarding at the 2024 Olympics in Paris is coming up next week, and among the star-studded cast of participants will be one athlete who stands out from the rest of the competition.
That skater is none other than Zheng Haohao, who is participating in her first Games at the age of 11.
Youngest Olympian Ever
Haohao was born in the year 2012, and she's the youngest Chinese Olympian in the nation's history at the Games. She is not, however, the youngest Olympian in the history of the Games. That title belongs to Greek gymnast Dimitrios Loundras, a competitor who took part in the 1896 Games in Athens when he was just 10.
Haohao began her professional skateboarding career in 2023 at the age of 10 as a participant in the World Skateboarding Games in Argentina. Her Olympic qualification was secured in Budapest, Hungary when she nailed a jaw-dropping 540 in the Budapest Olympic Qualifier Series.
She'll now face her most intense and prestigious challenge when she joins the rest of the competitors at in the Park preliminaries, from where she'll hope to earn her place in the Final later that evening on Aug. 6.
Haohao is 11 years and 11 months old. She turns 12 on August 11, just a few days after the Olympic skateboarding competitio wraps up in Paris.
She's not the first young skater to participate in the event. In 2020, the debut of skateboarding in the Olympics, Japanese phenom Kokona Hiraki won silver in the Park final in Tokyo at the age of 12. Now 15, Hiraki will look to land back on the podium in her second appearance at the Games.
With plenty of young talent in the mix for the women's Park finals, Haohao will aim to show that her age is nothing but a number and that she's already more than capable of competing with the world's best skateboarders.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as 11-Year-Old Zheng Haohao is China's Olympic Skateboarding Prodigy.
