Olympics
Sky Brown may look like the average little kid who goes to school every day and then spends her free time playing with her friends and little brother, but she’s far from normal. At only eleven years old, Sky is a world-renowned skateboarder, recently winning the Bronze medal at the World Championships in Brazil, and becoming the first woman to land a frontside 540 at the 2019 Summer X-Games. Now that has the world’s attention, she has been announced as an Olympic hopeful for the 2020 Summer Games, and recognized as a shoo-in for Team Great Britain. At just barely twelve years old when the Olympics will take place, this would make her the youngest ever summer Olympian for Great Britain, and the youngest female Olympian internationally since 1988.
Born in Japan in 2008 to a Japanese mother and a British father, Sky has enjoyed the duration of her childhood so far spending half of each year in Japan and the other half in the US living in California. Her father lived in the US for much of his life, so they wanted to ensure that she experienced the multiculturalism of two very different countries while growing up. Along with being an internationally ranked skateboarder, Sky is also a very talented surfer and was the first-ever winner of ‘Dancing With the Stars: Juniors’ in 2018.
Sky’s younger brother, Ocean Brown, is also an athletic prodigy at only eight years old and enjoys skating and surfing with Sky and their parents in Japan and California. They usually start their days around 4 or 5 am, catching a few waves before heading to school, and then either surfing or skating in the afternoons with their friends. Amazingly, Sky is not a formally trained skateboarder and she does not have a coach or training program; all of her skills are self-taught and learned from other skateboarders or online.
Since she is a dual citizen, Sky had the choice to compete for Team Japan or Team Great Britain at the Olympics, even though initially her parents did not want her to participate at all because they felt she was too young and the pressure would negatively impact her and disrupt their attempts to allow her to have a normal childhood. However, after speaking to the head of the British team and being told that they just want Sky to have “no pressure, and just have fun and get out there“, they are excited for her to have the opportunity to show young girls all across the world that they can do anything they put their minds too.
