At 11 years and 11 months old, Zheng Haohao is the youngest Olympian competing in the 2024 Olympic Games.
Born during the London 2012 Olympics, on the penultimate day of the competition, Haohao is not only the youngest Olympian this year, but the youngest Olympian to ever compete for the People’s Republic of China. (The youngest Olympian of all time is Dimitros Loundras, a male gymnast who took part in the 1896 Athens Olympics at just 10 years old.)
Haohao began learning how to skateboard at seven years old, but she has only been competing professionally for two years.
At the Budapest Olympic Qualifier Series in Budapest, Hungary, Haohao turned heads when she landed a 540 spin in the competition.
While training for the Olympics, she fractured her right middle finger doing an aerial maneuver.
It hasn’t slowed her down.
“It was painful. But I did not want to let go of the years of effort I had put in, so I chose to persevere,” she said in an interview with the International Olympic Committee.
On August 11, she will celebrate her 12th birthday, just days after she puts her skateboarding skills to the test in the Women’s Final on August 6th.
As the day approaches, the young athlete is trying to stay present and enjoy the moment.
“I don’t want to put any pressure on myself. I just want to show my best in Paris,” Haohao wrote on Weibo, a Chinese social media site.
Skateboarding itself is also young in the eyes of Olympic history.
As a sport, skateboarding originated in California in the 1950s. But it wasn’t until the Tokyo 2020 Summer Games that it made its official debut in the Olympic arena.
Surprisingly, when Tokyo first added skateboarding to the lineup, the announcement was met with some chagrin.
In fact, over 7,500 people signed a petition calling for a reversal of the decision, as many skateboarders felt like the Olympic recognition would limit the sport, both as an artform and a lifestyle.
Neftalie Williams is a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Southern California who specializes in skate culture. He’s also a skateboarder himself.
“What people are against, what they’re worried about, is that they’re going to lose a little bit of that freedom to explore,” Williams told CNN after the Tokyo announcement.
But some professional skateboarders celebrated the announcement, welcoming the global attention.
Women, in particular, saw it as an opportunity to step into the spotlight.
“For a very long time, our history as nontraditional skateboarders has been erased in media, so it is really exciting right now to see that playing out in the Olympics and having that public space,” female skater Adrian Koenigsberg told CNN.
As visibility increases for women in skateboarding, little girls — and boys — around the world will have a chance to watch Haohao make Olympic history on August 6th, as she faces young rivals like Parisian Louise-Aïna Taboulet, Argentinian Raicca Ventura, and American Ruby Lilley in the bowl.
“I want to tell the world that, even though I am young, I can skate well,” Haohao said. “I want to fulfill the dreams many adults have.”
Header images via @lilibet_skate on Instagram / (C) Paris 2024
