They could have been teenage girls giggling at the latest TikTok video of a dancing cat. Or planning a sleepover.
Instead, Sakura Yosozumi, Kokona Hiraki and Sky Brown were on a podium, with Olympic medals around their necks, trying to explain how it felt to win gold, silver and bronze on skateboards with a combined age of 44. “Stoked”, “insane”, and “crazy happy” summed it up.
“That’s the cutest press conference ever,” one journalist said as the three swapped jokes and talked about being best friends and how they had helped each other through Olympic competition. At 19, 12 and 13 respectively, it was one of the youngest, and certainly most gleeful, podiums ever.
If you ever wondered if it is possible to be among the best in the world at anything aged 13, women’s park skateboarding had the answer. At one stage, Brown — who became Great Britain’s youngest ever Olympic medallist when she took bronze less than a month after her 13th birthday — was asked about the next generation coming through. It was not a joke.
Brown had come into these Games carrying heavy expectations and a high profile, but she is no stranger to scrutiny. She is already an American reality TV winner and a Nike-endorsed professional athlete. She has her own custom Barbie doll. She has also published a book.
Advertisement
“I feel like people think I’m too young, that I can’t do it,” she said. “I believe in myself.” Perhaps she will start working on the next memoir after winning her medal — though she may have aged considerably given how she had to pull it off.
Brown had fallen at the same place in her first two runs of the women’s skateboard park final to be outside the medals. Her kickflip indy late into her routine was not coming off. Tension was setting in.
Her father Stewart, who introduced her to the sport and was guiding her through the competition from the sidelines in Team GB kit, had a quiet word before her final run. “It’s just a contest, if you fall it doesn’t define you,” he told her.
Brown went out and, this time, pulled off the troublesome move to leap into third place. “I just wanted to land my trick,” she said. “I didn’t really care what place I got.”
Brown lifted her arms in delight and, as she made her way out of the concrete bowl, her rivals came rushing to embrace her. Never before in any Olympic competition had there been so many hugs, and giggles, between competitors. “Sakura had said to me, ‘You’ve got it, Sky, I know you’re going to make it,’” she recalled. “That really made me feel better.”
Advertisement
There was still an anxious wait for Brown to see if Misugu Okamoto, 15, might push her out of the medals, but the world number one fell. Brown could celebrate her bronze with a score of 56.47. Hiraki took silver with 59.04 while Yosozumi — the old-timer at 19 — came first with 60.09 to make it three golds for Japan out of three competitions in this new addition to Olympic sport.
Brown could happily converse with her fellow medallists in Japanese. The daughter of a British man and Mieko, who is Japanese, the family are based in Miyazaki, Japan, but split time with Oceanside, California for skateboard competitions.
Brown’s paternal grandparents were watching in the early hours at home in the New Forest. Japan had hoped that Brown would skate for them but Team GB set about recruiting her in 2017, with an eye on the Olympics.
Brown came in as one of the favourites, and she had looked assured in qualification. Moves included a Japan air, big stalefish in the deep end and a 50/50 grind (you may have to take my word for it).
The final proved much more testing, in part because of oppressive heat at the Ariake Urban Sports Park with temperatures in the high 30s and humidity at 90 per cent. Her father held an ice pack under Brown’s arms in between runs.
Advertisement
Along with her brother, Ocean, Brown has been skating almost as long as she can walk. Throwing herself into flips and grabs, her YouTube videos are full of fearless moves — though Brown had to come back from a bad accident in training in May last year, plunging off a ramp and fracturing her skull as well as breaking her left arm and wrist.
“I didn’t know if I could skate after that,” she said. “My parents were like, ‘do something else’. But I think the accident made me stronger.”
The IOC hopes that skateboarding will help sell the Olympics to a younger crowd and Thomas Bach, the organisation’s president, came along to see how it was going. Brown was asked how it felt to be introduced to Bach before the medal ceremony. “Sorry, who?” Brown replied. Who cares about the old guy in a suit when you have just won Olympic bronze?
Brown is also an accomplished surfer, signed up by Billabong. She had wanted to try to qualify for both new sports in Tokyo but her parents felt it was too much.
It remains her ambition for Paris 2024 but will be complicated by the surfing taking place almost 10,000 miles away in Tahiti, French Polynesia. “It’ll be up to her by then, she’ll be 16,” her father said.
Advertisement
For now she remains 13. “She’s straight back to school and doing the things that families do,” Stewart said. “We’ll take her off social media for a little while.”
Youngest GB medallists
Sky Brown (13 years, 28 days)
Skateboarding, bronze, 2021
Sarah Hardcastle (15 years, 3 months, 22 days)
Swimming, 400m freestyle silver & 800m freestyle bronze, 1984
Edna Hughes (16 years, 11 days)
Swimming, 4x100m freestyle relay bronze, 1932
Florence Barker (16 years, 3 months, 26 days)
Swimming, 4x100m freestyle relay silver, 1924
Advertisement
Hilda James (16 years, 4 months, 2 days)
Swimming, 4x100m freestyle relay silver, 1924
