Sky Brown shines with success. Even on a chilly early spring morning in a chilly skatepark beneath London's crowded Westway overpass, Team GB's youngest-ever Olympic medalist looks beaming. Her bright, breezy demeanor isn't even fueled by coffee. why? She is only 15 years old.
This week was another busy week. She is flying from her home in Los Angeles to London for a packed schedule that includes a big skating stunt with TAG Heuer on March 26th.
The footage shows Brown performing tricks on a half-pipe floating in the River Thames, sandwiched between double-decker buses and Tower Bridge in the background. “I'm so happy to be here in London. That lamp was in the coolest place,” she says. Elle UK. “Without a doubt, it's the worst place I've ever skated.”
The words of the reigning world champion, who won a bronze medal at the Tokyo Olympics and is heading to the 2024 Olympics in Paris this summer, say a lot. Brown's meteoric rise began when she was just four years old. When her father shared a video of her skateboarding, the video quickly went viral. Since then, she has traveled the world, racking up her medals and breaking her records.
Despite this early success (not to mention her 1.3 million followers on Instagram), she's surprisingly ego-free, laughing off compliments and answering questions with youthful exuberance. She assures me that she's still doing “normal 15-year-old things,” like absentmindedly rolling her feet back and forth on her board while chatting in a small skate shop.
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How does someone so young cope with everything? “For me, it's not pressure. I do it for fun,” she says. “I can only be grateful that this is my lifestyle. This is what I love to do. It's my playground. Every time I compete, all I want is a gold medal, but I don't care too much about the result. I want to do my best and show my skateboarding style.”
In addition to his remarkable success, Brown's unique style is also unique. She is known for her ace tricks like her air in Japan. The skater pulls the board up behind her back with her knees facing down (although it sounds like she's defying gravity).
“I like to make skateboards look good,” she says. “For me, it's like a dance routine and I just want to look fluid but powerful. That's what I want to look like when I'm breathing air and doing tricks.”
Surprisingly, she doesn't have a coach and learns tricks from YouTube. Her father, Stuart, a long-time skater and surfer himself, is a big influence. “My dad has helped me a lot and he's basically my coach. I couldn't have done it without him,” she says.
These days, she explains, that help extends beyond skating to surfing, with each sport helping the other as well. “I always say it's like ramen and ice cream. If you eat too much ramen, you want ice cream. After skating, you need to cool down. If the water is too cold, the opposite is true. ” she laughs.
Brown narrowly missed out on his ambitious goal of representing Team GB in surfing and skateboarding at the 2024 Olympic Games, and most recently missed out on qualifying for the ISA World Surfing Games in Puerto Rico. She calls the experience “a little disappointing,” but is characteristically optimistic.
“I learned a lot and can carry it forward,” she says. “The goal for the 2028 LA Summer Olympics is two gold medals for GB in skating and surfing. It's a big dream, but I'm going to do my best.”
This resilience was essential to succeeding in a traditionally male-dominated sport, she says, recalling her early days. “When I went to the skate park, there were always big boys there. If I were you, I'd be a little girl trying to get in there,” she says.
“People will think, 'What is she doing here?'” and “You shouldn't be here.” To be honest, this kind of comment made me even more eager to prove it wrong. I didn't want the boys to have too much fun. ”
She distilled that spirit into her next book. The life-changing magic of skateboarding. This part-memoir-part-guide provides practical tips for readers to get on the message board, and the author hopes it will particularly resonate with young girls.
A TAG Heuer halfpipe floating in the River Thames will be donated to a skate park run by a charity in Nottingham following Brown's signature. It's heartening to think that young people are finding their own skating style by following in the footsteps of this incredible young athlete.
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