|
Post by Admin on Feb 16, 2020 18:11:38 GMT
Sky Brown isn't just youngest athlete in the 2020 Olympics — she's also the coolest. In The Know caught up with Brown, 11, at MAKERS Conference, where the powerhouse pre-teen was a featured speaker alongside pro skateboarding icon Tony Hawk. http://instagram.com/p/BuUAQeSFULB "I feel like some people think when you do sports, you can't be a girly girl," Brown told In The Know, citing Brazilian skateboarder Leticia Bufoni as one of her personal heroes. Watch in the video above. She added, "I also think Wonder Woman's pretty cool because she's basically saving the world and that's what I wanna do. I want to go to underprivileged places and teach kids how to skate, 'cause I feel like when they skate, they forget about what they're struggling through." http://instagram.com/p/B8J7IlwpxPu Brown, who will turn 12 in July, is slated to be the youngest athlete competing in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics — and Britain's youngest Olympian in history. It's been more than 80 years since a kid her age (of any country!) has qualified for the elite games. Although she's focused squarely on skateboarding right now, she's also a killer surfer who's tackled waves all over the world. "I feel like some people think when you do sports, you can't be a girly girl," Brown told In The Know, citing Brazilian skateboarder Leticia Bufoni as one of her personal heroes. Watch in the video above. http://instagram.com/p/B8fWLwCpQPt Brown, who will turn 12 in July, is slated to be the youngest athlete competing in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics — and Britain's youngest Olympian in history. It's been more than 80 years since a kid her age (of any country!) has qualified for the elite games. Although she's focused squarely on skateboarding right now, she's also a killer surfer who's tackled waves all over the world.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Feb 18, 2020 18:29:36 GMT
At 11 years old, Sky Brown is getting her first taste of a British institution - chip shop curry sauce. After a quick look at the menu, eight-year-old brother Ocean opted for, and is now quietly demolishing, a sirloin steak. In between mouthfuls the siblings are obsessing over Rubik's Cube-style puzzles, chat with the adults kept to a minimum. To the outsider, it looks like a normal Friday night family meal. But Sky Brown is not your typical young girl. With five months to go until Tokyo 2020, she is set to become Britain's youngest ever Olympian at a summer Games. A professional skateboarder, she has already won World Championship bronze, and at last summer's X Games became the first female ever to land a 'frontside 540'. She has a lengthy list of sponsors, close to 500,000 followers on Instagram, and is famous in the US for winning the 2018 reality TV show Dancing with the Stars: Juniors. Keeping life ordinary is a constant challenge for parents Stu and Mieko. And yet, time spent in her company in Aberdeen for December's Sports Personality of the Year felt no different to being around a regular kid. Tik Tok and drawing pictures on a borrowed waiter's pad were the themes of another family meal - this time a Saturday night curry (balti for Sky). So how do you stay grounded with the world at your feet? Part of the secret comes from living a life across multiple nations - including Olympics hosts, Japan.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Feb 19, 2020 6:02:33 GMT
Sky's dad Stu is English, but moved to the USA in his teens. He and mum Mieko met in Japan, where Mieko was born. Their daughter was born there too - in Miyazaki, where the family still have a home. For her entire education to date, Sky has spent half the school year in Japan and half in the US. It's quite the contrast. "School in Japan is strict," says Brown - who alongside her classmates is regularly expected to help clean the whole school (including the toilets). "We have snack time in America but we don't have that in Japan. We don't even choose our food in Japanese school. They put it on our plate and we have to eat the whole thing. If you leave anything on the plate then you can't go outside. The teacher doesn't want us to talk while we're eating." She laughs. "I feel like that's what makes me eat a lot." Luckily, eating Japanese food is never a bind. Sky's perfect way to start the day is with the Japanese delicacy tamago kake gohan - hot rice, raw egg and soy sauce. "It sounds gross but it's sooo good." As a rule, her days actually get going long before breakfast is served. "I usually get up at four or five and then go and get everyone else up then get my wetsuit and my bag ready," she says. Sky has never had a skateboarding coach - "I just learn tricks off YouTube" - and afternoons at the skate park near her US home in Huntingdon Beach, south of Los Angeles, are never formal. Sometimes they are spent in the company of three-time Olympic gold medallist Shaun White, who lives close by. "Her friends are all there so it's more like just playing with them," dad Stu says. "It's not serious. It's not 'going to training'." The relaxed attitude is what convinced her to choose to represent Team GB rather than Japan. In fact, if it wasn't for the laid-back approach of Skateboard GB chair Lucy Adams, Sky wouldn't be heading for Tokyo 2020 at all. "It's a tough one but I don't think we would be going if it wasn't in Japan," Stu says. "We wouldn't have had it on our radar from Japan asking her to be on their team. To be honest if it hadn't been for Lucy.... we were adamant we weren't going to let Sky do it." "Then we check the waves on a web camera, see which beach is good and then we go surfing for a few hours. From there we'll head to school. Then when we finish at school I'll either have guitar lessons or do jiu jitsu before heading either to the beach if the waves are good or the skate park if not." If it's all sounding a little bit 'Tiger Mum', listening to father Stu you understand the reality is anything but. Her guitar lessons are not spent chasing grades, rather just learning songs she likes. "Do you know Hey Jude?" she asks. "And Perfect from Ed Sheeran. They're both British right? I just realised that."
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Feb 19, 2020 18:28:45 GMT
Allowing their daughter to make her own decisions while also maintaining parental control is clearly a tough balancing act. It was ultimately Sky's decision to compete on a reality TV show. But in the aftermath of her victory her parents put their foot down and insisted she retreat back to their sleepy surf town in Japan for two months, rather than doing the full US media tour that includes appearances on programmes like The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Keeping life fun is the number one priority. It's clearly working. Despite two long days of filming and family meals there is not even a whiff of a tantrum or a falling out between the Brown siblings. When kid brother Ocean inadvertently throws a basketball into Sky's face, she shrugs it off with a smile. The fact that the days featured plenty of skating (including a SPOTY stunt and a chat with Gary Lineker) probably explains that. "I just feel free and happy," she says, asked to explain her feelings when skating and surfing. Inspiring others, particularly in Japan, is also a motivation. Sky - the only girl on her Japanese school football team - is already very aware of how different life is for her school friends in the US and those in Japan. Her American friends are among her followers on social media and will stay in contact when she is away. Her Japanese friends are not allowed phones so she only hears from them when their parents message one another. "I think sometimes [my Japanese friends] are scared to do what boys are doing but why should the boys have all the fun?" she says. "It's sad definitely because I feel like they are not having any fun." "She was really afraid of skating and surfing or even just playing in the ocean," she says. "We were like 'come out, come out' but she didn't really surf because she was scared. She eventually started surfing and then we told her to come to the skate park. She was really scared but she really changed a lot. She got braver and now she's surfing really good and skating pretty good too." Professional sport has long since been Sky's domain - she became the youngest girl ever to compete in the Vans US Open Pro Series in September 2016, aged eight. Just three years later she won bronze at September's senior World Championships in Brazil - a performance that marks her out as a genuine GB medal contender. Qualifying for Tokyo is not yet completed - spots will be decided based on performances at the next World Championships in May, and the world skateboarding rankings - but Sky is all but assured of a place. She is already a marked woman among her peers. In the early days of competition, her rivals would give her piggy backs and say how cute she was. "Then when she started to beat them they wouldn't even say hi to her," Stu says. She could make herself even more unpopular in Tokyo. She casually throws into our chat in Aberdeen that she has more complex tricks she's saving for the Olympics.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Aug 12, 2021 21:20:33 GMT
With three gold medals from three events, Tokyo's Ariake Urban Sports Park has been a home from home for Japanese skateboarders at the Tokyo Olympics. Sakura Yosozumi was the latest to top the podium as park skating's first ever Olympic champion, while her teammate, Kokona Hiraki, made history of her own as the youngest medalist since 1936 at the age of 12 years and 343 days. Of the nine skateboarding medals handed out in Tokyo -- the first time the sport has featured in the Olympic program -- Japan has won five of them. "After the decision was made for skateboarding to be included in Tokyo 2020, I think all the skaters strived to learn good tricks," was Yosozumi's explanation for her country's dominance. Another theme to emerge from skateboarding's Olympic debut is success for some of the Games' youngest ever competitors. Great Britain's Sky Brown, 13, claimed the bronze medal in Wednesday's park skating competition with her last run of the day. It meant the three skaters on the podium had a combined aged of 44 -- two years more than the medalists in last week's women's street final. With an English father and a Japanese mother, Brown says she also "really feels at home" in Tokyo, though she discredited the idea that youth is a prerequisite for skateboarding success. "Anyone can do skateboarding," she told reporters. "You don't have to be of a certain height or a certain age -- you can do it whenever you want ... You just got to skate and go for it." And when Brown made a last-ditch attempt to get into the podium positions with the penultimate run of the final, it was an encouraging word from eventual gold medalist Yosozumi that helped the Briton land the kickflip indy she had missed on the previous two runs. "She told me: 'You got it, Sky. We know you're gonna make it.' That really made me feel better," said Brown, who counts Yosozumi as one of her closest friends. A score of 60.09 with her first run of the final, which featured back-to-back 540s, was enough to secure Yosozumi the gold medal -- nearly 15 points higher than she had scored in the prelims. Hiraki won silver with 59.04 and Brown bronze with 56.47.
|
|