Arisa Trew wins gold in park skateboarding

After Australia’s Arisa Trew scored 93.18 in her final run in the women’s park skateboarding competition yesterday, she knew she was headed for the podium.

The wait to see exactly where it would land was unbearable.

It was only when Japan’s Cocona Hiraki’s score of 92.63 came in at the end of the competition that 14-year-old Trew knew she would take home the gold.

“When I realized I had won, I was in shock, excited and happy,” she said.

At 14 years and 88 days, Trew became the youngest Australian to win a medal. The previous youngest was Sandra Morgan, who was 14 years and 184 days old, who won gold in the women’s 4×100 freestyle relay in 1956.

Trew was in third place before executing an excellent third routine, highlighted by a 540, a trick with 11/2 rotations in the air, to jump into first place.

“On my first run, I landed on one of the tricks I had been landing forever,” he said. “So I knew it was all or nothing after that. And on my third run I had to secure my spot, so I just went all out.”

Hiraki led for two rounds after scoring a 91.98 on her first run, but had fallen to third place before her final chance. The 15-year-old responded with her best run of the day, a performance that had the crowd buzzing with each of her completed tricks.

Even younger

China’s Haohao Zheng, 11 years old and the youngest athlete at the Paris Games and one of the precocious in Olympic history, made her debut yesterday in the skateboarding event.

Haohao, who turns 12 on August 12, is the youngest Chinese Olympian in history.

The pre-teenager is outdone in her precocity by the man considered to be the youngest in the history of the Games, the Greek gymnast Dimitros Loundras, who participated at the age of 10 in the 1896 Olympic edition in Athens and won bronze in the team parallel bars.— EFE

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