Skateboarder Chloe Covell bounces back from Olympics to take out major comps
The pressure of the Paris Games proved too much for skateboarding schoolgirl Chloe Covell, but she’s back on the winner’s podium — and can’t wait for another crack at Olympic gold.
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There was no greater heartbreak than on the face of Chloe Covell after her Olympics loss.
She was the skateboarder slated to be our youngest-ever gold medal contender — instead, with the world watching, she finished eighth as Japan’s Coco Yoshizawa steamrolled to first place. Scenes of the Tweed Heads youngster in tears, being consoled by her dad and coach, cut through the heart of any parent and child watching.
But that was then. Today, young Chloe is riding high.
She’s reeling from her recent gold at the X Games China — beating none other than Yoshizawa — and Chloe also won the Street League Skateboarding (SLS) competition in Sydney last month.
Chloe knew she could win, so she did — and that was the difference from the Olympics.
“The X Games is definitely one of my favourite competitions to do, and as soon as I saw the course, I just like ‘Oh, this is gonna be really fun’,” she says.
“And once I got there, I had really good practices and I just wasn’t nervous.
“I was just having a great time not thinking, and just doing me.”
Going to the Olympics is such a life-changing moment for any athlete, but for a
14-year-old with the whole country cheering her on, it was an overwhelming one.
“I felt a little bit of pressure, because I knew I was capable of getting gold, but it just didn’t happen, which made it a little more emotional,” she says.
“I was pretty sad for maybe like a week or something, but after that, I just thought, ‘Well, it’s over now, so I can’t really do anything about it’, and I just got into the next competition.”
It’s an attitude of someone well beyond her years. Chloe knows this is what she wants, and she knows that because she loves what she does.
There are highs and the lows. She gets to travel the world, do her thing and then come home and be a normal kid at Palm Beach Currumbin State High School – a surf-loving teenager who just happens to skate.
“I go to a normal school,” she says.
“I go to a sporting public high school, so half the school goes for sports, and the other half is just mainstream, but they’re really good for when I go away, because they allow me to have so much time off.
“When I got back from the Olympics, my school did this whole walk-through thing for me, so I guess everybody knows what I do now,” Chloe laughs.
“I am just a normal kid at school. I’m just having fun with my friends, and they’re all really supportive of me.
“But there are definitely days where I’m like, ‘Dad, do we have to skate today?’ – but not much, because I’m a professional athlete, and I’ve got to work hard if I want to keep coming out on top.”
Chloe took up skating as a six-year-old, attracted to the sport when she saw American street skater Nyjah Huston perform “a cool trick” at the X Games.
“I was just watching the TV and the X Games came on,” she says. “After I saw that I just wanted to start.”
From there, things moved quickly.
Chloe quickly developed an arsenal of impressive tricks, within two years she was entering competitions on the Gold Coast, and three years after her first run at a skate park she was winning her first medals on the world stage.
At the X Games in Chiba, Japan in 2022, the then-12-year-old won bronze in women’s street. She went on to become the youngest athlete to win two medals before the age of 13 at the annual action sports event.
Early in 2023, still aged just 12, Chloe won a silver medal at the world championships in Sharjah, in the UAE. Critically, that performance carried valuable Olympic ranking points towards qualification for Paris.
Chloe maintained her form at the 2023 X Games in Ventura, California, winning the women’s street event, making her the youngest women’s street gold medallist in X Games history.
This time last year she achieved what she describes as the highlight of her career: her first win in her home country, taking out the Street League Skateboarding Championship Tour event in Sydney. It was her second consecutive win, after claiming the title at the previous event in Tokyo.
Chloe enjoys being the poster girl for women in the sport that drives her, and is often approached at her local skate park for tips and tricks. And she loves it, because she used to be one of them.
Because just four years ago, Chloe was sitting on the couch with her dad, former rugby league star Luke Covell, watching Australian Keegan Palmer win skateboarding gold at the Tokyo Olympics.
It was just the inspiration she needed.
“After the Tokyo Olympics, when skating was first introduced, I feel like skating in general, but also girls getting into skating, was a big thing with so many girls going into it, which is really amazing to see,” she says.
“And it’s just kept on growing and growing.
“So now every time I go to the skate park, there’s so many little girls down there, which is amazing to see.
“Quite a few people come up to me and, you know, ask for tips or anything and get a photo and stuff, which is really amazing.”
When she’s not practising, Chloe loves to hang out with her friends and go bike riding.
“I love any kind of bikes and doing wheelies and stuff,” she says.
“But I also like being on the water.
“I love jet skiing, I love surfing, swimming at the beach, on the river; it is really cool.”
In the semi-finals of a World Skateboarding Tour event in Dubai early this year, Chloe produced a career-best score of 93.49, the highest-ever run score by a female skater in the tour’s history. She turns 15 in February and is determined to enter as many competitions as she can until the next Olympics rolls around.
“For sure I’m gonna do it,” Chloe says of the prospect of the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
This time she’ll know what to expect, and won’t be so nervous.
“Like with the X Games, I’ve won X Games gold before so I knew I could do it again, and I just went in with heaps of confidence, and I was having a lot of fun,” Chloe says.
“And it felt really good to get the win.”
Through it all, her mum, dad and sister are her rocks. Dad Luke — who played 131 games
for Cronulla Sharks and 22 games for Wests Tigers as a winger — is by her side on most of her overseas trips, and is well aware of the pitfalls of international stardom at such a young age.
“They reassure me heaps,” Chloe says.
“Like, whenever I’m not in a really good mood and I’m hanging out with my sister, she always brings me happiness.”
She knows that winning isn’t everything, but remembering to enjoy her success is integral – and Chloe still has big dreams of taking home that Olympic gold.
“For me it’s definitely just about having fun and having a great experience with everybody,” she says.
“But my biggest dream is to win an Olympic gold.”
Do you have a story tip? Email lisa.mayoh@news.com.au
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