British teen Sky Brown targets medals in two sports at Paris Olympics
If there was an award for the world’s most talented teenager, skateboarding sensation Sky Brown would be a strong contender. She became Britain’s youngest Olympic medallist when she won park-skateboarding bronze at the delayed Tokyo Games in 2021. Two years on, she continues to skate and flip her way into the history books.
She was crowned world skateboarding champion, aged just 14, in February, sealing her qualification for next year’s Paris Olympics in the process. Three months later, she won the first World Skateboarding Tour event of the season in Argentina.
“It’s been an incredible year. I’m definitely still pinching myself,” says Brown, speaking in Shoreditch, where she opened a pop-up skate park.
The event had to be squeezed into Brown’s ridiculously crammed diary. Having set her sights on competing in skateboarding and surfing at the Paris Games, time is precious for Brown, who is aiming to join an elite group of 85 athletes who have stepped on the Olympic podium in two sports.
Growing up, surfing was merely a hobby for the gifted Brown, who was born to a British father and Japanese mother and splits her time between California and Japan. Catching waves on California’s Trestles Beach, where she is coached by her father, Stuart, perfectly complemented the tricks and flips she effortlessly pulls off in the skate park.
While the women’s park-skateboarding event is due to take place at the Games on Aug 6, surfing is scheduled to run from July 27 to July 30 in Tahiti in French Polynesia, more than 9,000 miles away from the Olympics in the French capital. How would the ambitious Brown compete in both?
“I’ve thought about it,” admits Brown, when pressed on the logistics. “It’s not going to be easy, but I’d love to go to Tahiti. I’m always up for a challenge. I’m going to try my best to go for gold for Team GB.”
For the past year, Brown has been busy competing in the World Surf League, where she is hoping to earn enough ranking points to qualify for Paris. Next March, she will take part in the World Surfing Games in Puerto Rico, which acts as the final qualification opportunity for the Games.
It was her father who encouraged her love of surfing. “He’s been taking me to the beach since I was a baby,” says Brown, who gets up at 5am to fit in surfing and skating practice before her school lessons – which are all online – begin.
“I’ve always loved being in the ocean. He’s my coach, he helps me with everything. I’m not sure what I’d do without him – he’s always giving me the best support and helps with my skateboard runs and films with me.
“The surfing is going pretty well. I’ve done pretty well in most of the contests this year. It’s been really fun. Hopefully, I’m going to get in. I’m doing the qualification series right now and have been getting pretty good scores. I’m going with the flow and seeing where it takes me.”
Brown, it turns out, has been going with the flow her entire life. When she started skateboarding, aged four, the Olympics were never on her or her family’s radar.
“It was never a path that was looked for, it’s sort of just fallen into her lap,” Stuart says.
It was not until she became Nike’s youngest sponsored athlete seven years later, along with her desire to represent Britain, that her colourful young life was thrust into the limelight.
In 2018, she starred in the American reality TV show Dancing With The Stars: Juniors. Brown had never danced before but ended up winning the competition, aged 10.
When I interviewed Brown four years ago, her parents controlled her social media accounts. Nowadays, Brown has free rein over her 1.3 million followers on Instagram, where she documents the highs and lows of competing in a high-risk sport. Last October, she fractured her ankle after a fall in training, causing her to miss the WST Rome Park Championships.
“Things like that don’t hold me back, they just make me stronger,” Brown says. “Falling is part of life, so is getting back up. It’s a lifestyle for me and it’s what I love to do and nothing’s going to stop me. Hopefully, that will inspire other girls to keep going in sport.”
The day after opening the skate park, where she is helping to launch a GB Skateboarding partnership with Samsung aimed at engaging more young people in the sport, she flew to Indonesia for a period of warm winter surfing.
“It looks crazy on the internet,” concedes Stuart, who accompanies his daughter on all her trips. “People see she’s in London, then back in Japan, but actually because we do it quickly, we keep it really tight. She missed two X Games. Most skateboarders who are invited to the X Games will never not go – it’s the Olympics of skateboarding – she says no to a lot of stuff to keep that balance. She’s done the bare minimum to be the highest British-ranked surfer.”
Brown is still not old enough to buy a National Lottery ticket in the UK, but should she succeed in representing her country in two sports next year in Paris, Brown will feel like she has won the jackpot.
