Australia’s youngest-ever Olympic medal winner has held her title for 68 years, however two teenage Queensland skateboarding prodigies have their eyes set on toppling the file.
Sandra Morgan-Beavis and Arisa Trew are generations aside, however their respective journeys to Olympic Video games success have some clear parallels.
Each high worldwide athletes had been impressed by function fashions of their pre-teen years.
For Morgan-Beavis, a speech by Australian sprinter Marjorie Jackson-Nelson ignited a ardour that led her to her profitable a gold medal with the ladies’s 4x100m freestyle relay group on the 1956 Melbourne video games.
She was simply 14 on the time.
Trew remembers gathering with associates across the tv to observe skateboarding’s debut on the 2021 Olympic Video games.
“I used to be like, I actually wish to be there … I simply wish to do this a lot,” she mentioned.
Inside three years, the 13-year-old skater was touchdown tips no different girl on the earth may do.
The Gold Coast teen made historical past ultimately 12 months’s X-Video games when she turned the primary feminine ever to land a “720” — a difficult transfer that includes two full mid-air rotations — and took residence two gold medals.
At the moment ranked eleventh on the earth, Trew is getting ready for 2 extra competitions to cement her place among the many high 20 park skaters who will qualify for the Paris Olympic Video games later this 12 months.
“Park” competitions happen on a course consisting of a hollowed-out concrete bowl, with a number of totally different components together with ramps, quarter pipes, and bumps.
“One thing drastic must occur for her to not make the Olympics,” Trevor Ward, Trew’s coach, mentioned.
Past that, Trew’s objective is to interrupt the medal file set by Morgan-Beavis.
“My final objective for the Olympics is a gold medal, or a podium … I simply have to coach actually arduous,” she mentioned.
Along with her birthday in Might, Trew can be 14 on the Paris Video games, however three months youthful than Morgan-Beavis was when she gained gold in 1956.
Subsequent era dominating ranks
Most of Australia’s Olympic skateboarding hopefuls are below 18, and the pattern of a lot youthful opponents has emerged since coach Ward was a professional skater.
“A few of it’s the concern issue, they’re in a position to make it and get higher actually quick in comparison with older folks,” he mentioned.
“You get to some extent inside your skating profession, the place you ask your self, ‘Do I wish to harm myself to push myself that a lot additional?'”
Ward mentioned skateboarding’s inclusion within the Olympics boosted participation within the sport and retired pro-skateboarders had been now teaching the following era.
“It truly is totally different than after I went by way of, I did not flip professional till I used to be 23, whereas children are phenomenal on the age of 10,” he mentioned.
“These children simply see every part on the web after which they only do it … whereas after I was a child, we needed to wait months for the magazines to come back from the USA to Australia.”
Olympic dream on cusp of actuality
Fellow Gold Coast skater Chloe Covell, 14, is one other native hoping to interrupt the nation’s long-standing Olympic medal file.
A number of months older than Trew, the Tweed Heads native is fourth within the qualifying rankings within the “road” occasion, which focuses extra on utilizing an city setting as a playground to do tips on obstacles like stairs, ledges, curbs and handrails.
“After I was a child and began to do skating and received higher and higher, I undoubtedly did hope to go to the Olympics in the future,” Covell mentioned.
“Now that my dream may come true … it is tremendous superb and thrilling to consider,” she mentioned.
“I am fairly assured as a result of I am in a very good place.”
A full-circle journey
Morgan-Beavis mentioned profitable an Olympic medal at 14 was “indescribable” and had a big impact on the remainder of her life.
“It made me develop up in a short time,” she mentioned.
“My recommendation for [younger Olympians] is take pleasure in it and do not enable different folks’s opinions to get you off monitor. Typically folks could be merciless with their phrases, simply do not hearken to them.”
Morgan-Beavis mentioned coping with detractors within the Australian group, who resented her being within the ultimate due to her age, was troublesome.
“Even after I was strolling down the causeway to go to my race, I used to be informed ‘that is in your head’ … it was an enormous duty,” she mentioned.
After profitable gold, Morgan-Beavis met Marjorie Jackson-Nelson and informed her in regards to the inspiration she’d drawn from her speech all these years earlier than.
The champion swimmer mentioned that “stunning second” had inspired her to affect the following era.
“I typically take into consideration that … it is one of many issues I’ve all the time appreciated doing. I all the time prefer to encourage youthful athletes as a result of somebody did that to me,” Morgan-Beavis mentioned.
The Australian Olympic Committee mentioned solely three 13-year-old athletes have ever competed within the inexperienced and gold.
Ian Johnston competed in rowing in 1960, whereas swimmers Tracey Wickham represented Australia in 1976 and Jo-Anne Barnes in 1968.
