Chloe Covell could make history for Australia at the 2024 Paris Olympics
She has just hit her teenage years and loves nothing more than hanging out with her friends at the local skate park. But Chloe Covell is changing the sport in ways nobody previously imagined.
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Most Australians will become familiar with Chloe Covell in August – but the teenager is already changing the sport of skateboarding in ways few could have imagined – and she’s just getting started.
“The biggest thing right now is women’s progression,” Covell says. “All the girls are progressing so fast, it’s insane how crazy everyone is getting and doing it so fast. For me to be a part of that, it’s really cool to think about.”
At just 14, Covell is Australia’s number one female skateboarder, and on the road to represent the nation at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games to be held from July 26 to August 11.
She’s already created history as the youngest ever X Games gold medallist in street skateboarding last year, and with Paris in her sights, she still has the opportunity to become the youngest Australian Olympic gold medallist, as she will be 14 years and four months.
(Australia’s youngest gold medallist is Sandra Morgan-Beavis, who was 14 years and six months when she swam in the winning 4x100m freestyle relay team at the 1956 Olympics.)
Australia’s skateboarding assistant coach Kat Williams, a former competitor, gives perspective on what this tiny teen from Tweed Heads, who attends Palm Beach Currumbin State High School on the Gold Coast, is doing.
“Chloe’s one of those athletes who will keep breaking the ceiling for herself,” Williams says.
“She’ll be able to achieve anything she puts her mind to.”
Covell has been skating from the moment she could balance.
She’s been aided in her journey by mother Julie and father Luke – the former NRL player who scored 1090 points for Cronulla Sharks and Wests Tigers from 2003-2010.
Barring catastrophe, Covell will qualify as one of Australia’s 22-person skateboarding team following the Olympic qualifier urban series from May 16-19 in Shanghai, then in Budapest from June 20-23.
“Hopefully I can go to the Olympics, I’m in a pretty good spot so hopefully everything goes according to plan,” Covell says.
“It will be amazing, it’s definitely one of my biggest dreams and biggest goals to compete in the Olympics, and if I end up doing it hopefully I can do really well and get a podium, hopefully I can get a gold medal.”
Ask anyone who knows the sport, and they’ll tell you her prospects are bright.
Recently in Dubai, during the World Skateboarding Tour, Covell produced a career-best performance in earning a 93.49 score from the judges in the semi-final. No female skater has earned a score that high before. Covell was eventually outscored in the final by Japan’s Liz Akama, 270.84 to 267.29 (the scores are a combination of their best run score and two highest trick scores out of five attempts), and claimed the silver medal.
“If we’re talking about how quickly she’s moving the needle,” Williams explains, “watching her in a contest and when she’s practising, she’ll literally learn a trick, and she’ll say, ‘Hey, check out this new trick.’
“And within three months she’ll be doing a flip-in, flip-out. Her ability to just understand skateboarding, at her age, is just incredible.
“She is so tough and resilient too. She will slam into things, in skateboarding you’re constantly falling into concrete, and she’ll pull herself back up and do what she needs to do.
“She’s super strong and tough.
“For someone to try skateboarding, I mean you’re going to fall off. So to be able to understand that, and find the enjoyment in landing your tricks and learning, and that human progression, there’s something in that.
“It takes a certain type of person to really want to push through those times when it’s tough. And Chloe absolutely has that.”
Covell won gold at the Street League Skateboarding event in Sydney last October after what she described as her worst injury.
“The worst one actually is what happened when I was trying a new trick and fell on to a sharp corner of a ledge, I had to get two stitches in my knee, which wasn’t good,” Covell says.
“It was the day before the SLS. It was pretty cool to be badly injured and then win.
“I just went to the doctors, they had a look, said, ‘The worst thing that’s going to happen is that you land hard on your feet, your knees bend too much and then you bust your stitches out.’
“I’m like, ‘Yeah OK, but what if I fall on my knee?’ They put some padding on it. I was a little bit scared but I just had to block it all out and focus on what I was doing.
“You get hurt a lot more if you’re not 100 per cent focused on what you’re doing.”
Williams, who helped coach the Australian team at the Tokyo Games when skateboarding made its debut, first met Covell several years ago. “She was so small,” Williams recalls.
“But even from inside the team, watching Chloe, how much she’s progressed over the last couple of years but also how fast she’s helping push our sport is absolutely incredible.
“How she holds herself, she’s always having so much fun, but she’s absolutely competitive with herself. So she has that perfect balance of doing it for herself and the right reasons.
“That’s why when you watch her in a contest phase, she’s able to have fun and also be so supportive of her peers and friends in that space, because she’s really competing against herself.
“The way she’s able to see and experience everything is perfect. Also, her parents have supported her through that in a really healthy way for someone so young, to be able to understand the environment and pressures but also to be able to protect her and ensure she still enjoys it as a young athlete.
“The pressure for young athletes in high performance environments, and their brain development, is something that is starting to be looked into and researched, but I wouldn’t say there’s enough to really decide whether it’s a positive or a negative.
“With someone like Chloe, who has really been able to step into that and handle it well, the pressures are adult pressures. You can’t decide if it’s going to be a healthy path through or not.”
But, Williams explains, Covell has a rare gift of understanding an occasion but not becoming overawed by it.
“It’s the way she can understand and feel the emotion in the moment, and then let it go,” Williams continues. “I’ve seen her so competitive with herself trying new tricks. Skateboarding can be so frustrating, because it’s one of those sports where you fall more times than you don’t.
“That is why it’s so fun and so addictive; you want to nail that trick, you want to land it.
“But in those moments of frustration, you can get lost in it, but she goes back to being a kid and having fun with her friends.
“To be able to process moments like that, I was like, ‘Wow, she can really handle this, she’s going to enjoy what’s coming for her.’”
Covell herself loves nothing more than skating in the park with mates, and is still coming to terms with her rapidly expanding profile. “Everything is just normal when I’m not skating, apart from people coming up to me saying, ‘You’re Chloe Covell’,” she says.
“But at school it’s pretty good, they’ve been really supportive, and my friends also. Whenever I’m at home I’m at school, and whenever I’m away I just take my laptop and take stuff with me and try to do as much as I can.
“I just love skating and progressing and having fun with my friends, it’s been really fun.
“Over the last few months I’ve learned lots of new tricks which has been good. I don’t know what’s happened, but I’ve been getting less scared, which is good. I’ve been doing tricks a lot quicker and easier, it’s been really fun.
“When I’m just skating friends, it gets me really hyped and I try new tricks. If they’re trying a new trick, I’ll try a new trick.
“A couple of them I do compete against, but a lot of them aren’t competitors, I just skate with them at the skate park.
“I just get inspiration off other competition skaters, other girls or boys, or direct from Instagram, I’ll see something and be like, ‘I want to try that.’
“Other times I’ll be with friends and just try a new trick and learn it. You make up whatever you want, and try it. I have a lot of people around me, supporting me, but I guess it’s just believing in yourself.
“Travelling and spending time with friends is really cool.
“I’ve just been practising heaps, training a lot. I just keep on skating and waiting for the next comp, but also progressing heaps at the same time.”
Many skateboarding insiders believe Covell will change the path forward for females in the sport.
“In the past, the skate industry was a very male-dominated sport, but it’s changing really, really quickly,” Williams says.
“And it’s wild to think athletes under 18 are helping push that inspiration for the next generation.
“Skateboarding isn’t like other sports where you have set training times.
“Those who make it are the ones who finish school and want to go skateboarding, who have weekends free and want to go skateboarding, and want to be around their friends and keep pushing and progressing.
“It’s one of those sports where there’s endless opportunities for how many tricks you want to learn.
“And Chloe is one of those skaters who wants to be the best in the world, she wants to do the best tricks, and she wants to grow skateboarding as far as it possibly can, and I think she has that in her to do that in a fun and inspiring way.”
But Williams hopes that as the Games approach and more Aussies start paying attention to medal contenders, there is not too much expectation placed on Covell’s young shoulders.
“The biggest thing from my experience is not talking about the medals, not talking about what the outcomes could be, but just enjoying the process, Chloe being herself and leaning into her supports,” Williams says.
“Pushing the narrative of the outcome, and not the journey through, isn’t the way to do it, especially for young athletes.”
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