Teens Sweep Olympic Podium, But Is Age Really A Thing In Skateboarding? Read on.
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If you watched the Women's Street comp last night live from the Tokyo 2020 Olympics you may have been surprised at just how many young teenage girls were competing in the final. You also may have been surprised that the lone American, Alexis Sablone, at age 34 with a degree from MIT held her own and just narrowly missed podium.
That's skateboarding. Age doesn't matter, although the younger generation seems to be gaining on all of us. Perhaps that's because they have seen women like Sablone pave the way for them and they know that anything is possible. Sablone has been skateboarding longer than some of these young girls have been alive.
Watching two thirteen year old girls take the podium - Momiji Nishiya (Japan) and Rayssa Leal (Brazil) along with sixteen year old Funa Nakayama (Japan) it seemed to be a teens game in the end. But when you look closely at the scores, American skater, Alexis Sablone, was not too far off.
We may be celebrating the youth at these games - as skateboarding in the Olympics is one sport that has no age requirements. But let's not forget about the women like Alexis who have competed and charged so hard all these years and are still at the top of their game. Yesterday Sablone showed the world that for those of us that skate, skateboarding has no expiration date.
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| Alexis Sablone (USA) Photo via USA Skateboarding |
Other interesting facts - Momiji is not quite the youngest to win a gold medal at the games but she does fall into an elite group - had Rayssa Leal taken Gold she would have been the youngest gold medalist in Olympic history.
Here are some stats: