While most 11-year-olds are busy enjoying the summer holidays, China’s skateboarding prodigy Zheng Haohao is on a different sort of vacation: she is competing at the Paris Olympics.
Zheng will make history as the youngest ever Olympian to represent China – and the youngest athlete at the Games – when competition gets underway in the women’s park skateboarding on Tuesday and five days shy of her 12th birthday.
So, who is this skateboarding whizz? Born one day before the closing ceremony at the London 2012 Olympics, Zheng took up skateboarding only when her parents bought her a board for her seventh birthday. She was exceptionally gifted at it and, after winning various national bowls and championships, she was soon competing internationally.
With her tiny frame and a toothy grin, she was seen practising this week at the Place de la Concorde’s park bowl, mingling with her competitors under the watchful eye of her coach, Danny Wainwright.
Bristol native Wainwright, a professional skateboarder with experience judging top-tier skate events, started working with Zheng ahead of the skateboarding Olympic qualifier in Dubai last March. Under his tutelage, Zheng has climbed up the rankings, jumping from 43rd to 26th.
Zheng preferred uneven surfaces where she could climb rocks and steps when she was little, nascent signs that she would become an adrenaline junkie, albeit one with an inquiring mind and an adventurous streak.
“She’s very academic,” Wainwright told Paris 2024’s official website. “She loves to study. She loves to write. And she loves English study books. So if I make a checklist of all the tricks that she has to do, do those tricks three or five times in a row, she loves it. I’ll have a little clipboard and a pen and a little Excel file printed out, and I say, ‘I’m going to make one’ and she’s like, ‘Make it colourful! Make it colourful!’ And she’s ticking it off and she’s drawing things around it. It’s really funny.”
Ironically, on her official Paris 2024 profile, Zheng lists painting as her only hobby, but when you have been a professional skateboarder for the past two years, there probably is not much time for anything else other than to work on new tricks.
Zheng stunned the world at the Budapest Olympic Qualifier Series this year when she landed a 540 spin – a skateboard trick consisting of a 360-degree spin followed by another 180-degree spin (the board almost spins a full rotation twice).
Skateboarding was a huge hit when it was added to the Olympic programme in Tokyo, with many pointing to the endearing camaraderie on show between competitors. Britain’s Sky Brown has often mentioned how some of her best chums are those who she competes against and travels the world with and, for Zheng, it is no different.
“Competition to me is just to get together with my good friends,” she said in an interview with China Central Television. “I know over 10 of the world’s top 20 skateboarders. It’s like we are playing a fun game. Everyone has to show the best they’ve got.”
The youngster’s participation at the Games is likely to receive a mixed reaction, even though her participation falls entirely within the rules. There is no specific age limit for taking part in the Olympic Games. Instead, it is up to each international sports federation to decide the minimum age for competing on the Olympic stage. Gymnasts, for example, have to be a minimum age of 16, boxers have to be at least 18 but there is no minimum age to compete in surfing or skateboarding.
Which is why competitors in the latter tend to be extremely young and fearless, although Britain’s Andy McDonald is gloriously challenging the skateboarding status quo. At the ripe age of 51 – and four decades older than Zheng – he will compete in the men’s park skateboarding on Wednesday.
For the youngsters, the rewards can be big. Brown, who became the youngest athlete ever to secure a sponsorship deal with Nike and has a social media following of more than 1.3 million on Instagram, topped the list for the British Olympics rich list from the Tokyo Games, with the then 13-year-old is estimated to have made £3.5 million from those Olympics alone.
You wonder whether Zheng’s own Instagram following (she currently has a modest total of 987) will grow after the Games. After finishing in 23rd on her World Championship debut in Rome last year, she is unlikely to feature among the medals, but given what she has achieved in her relatively short life, this young skateboarding star knows no limits.
