The rise and rise of 16-year-old Luke Littler at the PDC darts world championship in London will be one of the sporting stories of the year. He may already be a good bet to lift the BBC sports personality of the year award in December. As a teenage sporting sensation, he is in exalted company.
Pelé
Edson Arantes do Nascimento, better known as Pelé, scored in each knockout round as Brazil won its first men’s football World Cup in Sweden in 1958. Then 17, Pelé went on to become the standout player of his era and the cornerstone of the Brazil sides that also took the trophy in 1962 and 1970. His joyous and fearless approach to the game was matched by a delightful off-field personality and in 2000 he was jointly awarded Fifa’s player of the century with Argentina’s Diego Maradona.
Nadia Comăneci
Romania’s Nadia Comăneci became a household name after stunning the Montreal Olympics at 14 with a perfect score of 10 on the uneven bars and the balance beam. It was the first time anybody had achieved it and the organisers in 1976 couldn’t even display her score properly – the feat had been so inconceivable the scoreboard didn’t go up to double digits. Comăneci took home three individual golds, an individual bronze and a team silver in her first Olympic appearance and added two more golds in Moscow in 1980.
Mike Tyson
Mike Tyson’s personality away from the ring and later conviction for rape mark him out as a completely different sporting personality to many of those on this list lauded as heroes, but he undoubtedly made an impact on his sport as a young fighter. In November 1986, less than two years after his first professional fight, Tyson was crowned WBC heavyweight champion of the world, the youngest person ever to win a title bout at 20 years and four months.
Tiger Woods
Like Tyson, Tiger Woods did not quite reach the pinnacle of his sport as a teenager, but was well on the way. He turned professional at the age of 20 in 1996 and by the end of the following April he had become the youngest person to win the US Masters, just eclipsing Jordan Spieth who in 2015 also won the title when he was 21, but a little bit older than Woods had been.
Abhimanyu Mishra
No discussion of darts is complete until somebody has chipped in with “but is it a sport?” and the same can be said of chess, where historically there are younger stars than Littler. Bobby Fischer won his first US open chess championship at 14 and in 2021 Abhimanyu Mishra became the youngest ever chess grandmaster at 12 years and four months.
Ronnie O’Sullivan
Snooker is also a sport where brains and accuracy dominate and Ronnie O’Sullivan has been at the top of the game for decades, having broken through with his first competitive 147 maximum break at the 1991 English amateur championship when he was 15. He truly has burned the candle at both ends, as when he won the 2023 UK championship at 47 years and 363 days – his eighth title – he set a new record as the oldest ever winner.
Boris Becker and Martina Hingis
Between 1976 and 1984 only Björn Borg, Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe won the gentlemen’s singles at Wimbledon. In 1985 not only did Boris Becker upend the established order, he did so as the first unseeded player to win the title, and the youngest, at 17.
A decade later it was the turn of Martina Hingis to wow the tennis world. At 15 years and 9 months, her doubles win with Helena Suková at Wimbledon in 1996 made her the youngest ever grand slam title winner and by the following year she had become the youngest woman ever to be ranked the world’s number one player.
Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney
The England men’s football team benefited from two teenage goalscoring prodigies in rapid succession, with Michael Owen emerging as an 18-year-old star at the 1998 World Cup finals with a sensational solo goal in England’s defeat by Argentina, and a similar-aged Wayne Rooney emerging as England’s most potent goal threat in its run to the quarter-finals at Euro 2004. That adulation is a far cry from their careers today though, where Owen is known chiefly for his somewhat dour approach to football punditry and lack of interest in movies, while Rooney is nursing his bruises after being sacked this week after a disastrous spell at the helm of Birmingham City as manager.
Emma Raducanu
Another potential cautionary tale for Littler is that of Emma Raducanu. The 18-year-old British tennis player became the first qualifier, man or woman, to win a grand slam singles title with an astonishing breakout win at the US Open in 2021. She has been unable to replicate that lighting-in-a-bottle moment with deep runs into other tournaments though, and since then has been plagued by injuries and the loudmouthed criticism of the likes of Piers Morgan. Raducanu is now preparing for the Australian Open after eight months out.
Katie Ledecky
Perhaps a career trajectory that Littler would rather aim for than that of Radacanu or Rooney is that of Katie Ledecky. She stunned the world when aged 15 she won the 800 metres freestyle swimming gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics, narrowly missing out on a world record in the process. Ledecky has gone on to win another six Olympic gold medals and21 world championship gold medals. No female swimmer has won more. And with Littler looking set to dominate a sport where you can play at the top level into your 50s, he could end up with more world titles than any other sportsperson in history.
