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E-mail China Daily, August 8, 2024
No pressure, just fun — China's skateboarding prodigy Zheng Haohao has embraced the high-stakes occasion of competing at the Olympics to just enjoy the sport as much as any of her peers.
Zheng Haohao in action during the women's skateboarding park preliminaries at the Olympic Qualifier Series in east China's Shanghai on May 16, 2024. (Xinhua/Wang Kaiyan)
Only, Zheng did it at a younger age than all the others.
When she dropped in for her first run in the women's park qualification round on Tuesday, she wrote a piece of history at these Games as the youngest athlete of any delegation across all sports to compete in Paris at 11 years, 360 days old.
To put it into perspective, Zheng has just completed her primary school studies and is enjoying her Olympic debut as probably the coolest graduation trip among all her classmates.
And for the result? She doesn't seem too bothered.
"I just relaxed, chilled out and tried to put on my best performance and, most importantly, enjoy the experience," Zheng, wearing a white helmet with cartoon graffiti, said in a calm tone after her qualification round.
"It was just so fun and so special to have a summer vocation unlike anyone else in school. I feel proud of it, the whole experience that I've been able to skate at such a big event on the international stage."
The park discipline of skateboarding involves athletes skating across a hollowed-out concrete bowl to perform a variety of tricks using different elements, such as ramps, quarter-pipes and bumps, to accumulate as high a score as possible in each 45-second run.
As passionate about skating as any of her senior counterparts, Zheng's lack of strength and speed due to her young age, however, cost her dearly in routine execution. She completed only her first run of the three attempts each athlete is allowed in the qualifier, ranking 18th among all 22 entries with a first-try score of 63.19 points.
She missed the top-8 cut for the final as expected, but has gained a lot more than just an opportunity to take three more runs.
"I made new friends that I wouldn't have met in classrooms, exchanged a few pins and learned some new tricks from all the other older sisters competing here," Zheng said of her biggest takeaway from Paris.
"All the older sisters have greater power and higher jumps than I did. I am just little and short now but I will learn from them and try to improve as much as I could."
Before Zheng, the youngest previous athlete representing a Chinese delegation at the Olympics was teen swimmer Nian Yun, who competed in the women's 4x100m freestyle relay at 13 years and 287 days old at the 1996 Games in Atlanta, in the United States.
