Super fly
The sun is setting on another hazy summer evening in Oceanside, California, a city 57 km north of San Diego, and a tiny figure is flying through the sky. She bends her knees, clutches the end of her skateboard and comes gliding down an enormous ramp, her sun-bleached surfer hair bouncing in the wind.
“That was sick!” Sky Brown shouts, as she makes an immaculate landing. The skateboarder is ranked third in the world and on 4 August will take to her board to represent Team GB at the postponed Tokyo Olympics. When she competes in the women’s park event, she will be one of the UK’s first Olympic skateboarders, and Team GB’s youngest ever summer Olympian. Aged 13 years and 23 days, she will surpass Margery Hinton, who was 13 years and 44 days when she swam at the Amsterdam Games in 1928.
As Brown takes off again, everyone on the ground – including her dad, Stuart, and some local skate fans – looks up in awe. She seems unaware that all eyes are on her. The fearless teenager, who skateboarding legend Tony Hawk last year described as a “unicorn” and “one of the best female skaters ever, if not one of the best well-rounded skaters ever, regardless of gender”, has been drawing crowds since she was eight.
It’s only when she shouts “Daddy!” in a high-pitched voice, wrapping her arms around her father and talking to him in Japanese (her first language; she was born in Miyazaki, Japan, to her British father and Japanese mother, Mieko), that I’m reminded of how young Britain’s brightest hope in one of the Olympics’ newest sports actually is.
Brown has jumped over two major hurdles to get to Tokyo. First – and this, if nothing else, she has in
