Meet Sky Brown, the 10-year-old skateboarder on pace to shake up the 2020 Tokyo Olympics
Sky Brown is a 10-year-old skateboarder from Miyazaki, Japan. She is inspiring many skateboarders and young girls around the world.
Skateboarding is a male-dominated sport, but over the past few years, females have begun to move into the spotlight.
Being a young girl, Brown has inspired many others with her passion and popularity.
In partnership with Almost Skateboards and Skateistan, a non-profit that empowers youth through skateboarding and education, Brown designed her boards to raise money for the organization.
"I wanna be young and show every girl that you can do it, just go for it — even though you're little," she told the Daily Mail.
She is Anglo-Japanese. Her mother, Mieko, is from Japan and her father, Stuart, is from England.
As a dual citizen of England and Japan, Brown could have competed for either country in the Olympics.
She chose to compete on the British team because of a more relaxed approach.
"The British Skateboarding Association, they told me 'no pressure, just have fun and get out there,'" Brown said in a video interview with BBC Sport after her selection in March. "So that's why I chose England."
She began skateboarding when she was three years old.
Brown comes from a family of skateboarders, but her dad was apprehensive when she showed an interest in it.
"I didn't want her to get on a skateboard," Stuart Brown told Women in the World. "You have a little girl, and you want to wrap her in cotton wool. But it was the one toy she kept going back to."
Her preschool even had a skatepark.
Her daily routine involves a 5 a.m. wake up to go surfing before school.
Brown's talents on a board don't stop at skateboarding. She's also a talented surfer and landed her first major sponsorship when she was seven.
With surfing also becoming an Olympic sport during Tokyo 2020, Brown hopes to qualify to compete in the event in addition to skateboarding.
She skates and surfs with her 7-year-old brother, Ocean, who is also a rising star.
Ocean Brown is also considered a child prodigy in sports. Both of their Instagram accounts are managed by their mom.
If Brown qualifies for Tokyo 2020, she will become Great Britain's youngest summer Olympian.
Brown will be 12 years and 12 days old at the start of the Games in July 2020, bypassing Margery Hinton who was 13 years and 43 days old when the 1928 Olympics began in Amsterdam.
Brown will not hold the record for the youngest-ever Olympian from Great Britain. Cecilia Colledge was 11 years and four months old when she competed in the 1932 Winter Olympics in figure skating.
The youngest-ever Olympic athlete since the games debuted in 1896 was Dimitrios Loundras. Loundras competed in the debut of the games in Athens at the age of 10 and won a bronze medal in gymnastics.
Brown must be ranked in the top 20 in the world in her discipline based on points scored in qualification tournaments to be eligible.
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