The sport of tweens: Is 11 too young to compete at the Olympics?

As Australia’s 11-year-olds were leaving bananas to rot in their bags, arguing about the rules of tag and complaining about homework, a girl their age stepped onto the field of play in Paris to do battle for an Olympic gold medal.

China’s Zheng Haohao, 11, was the youngest athlete to compete in Paris. She was joined by Australians Arisa Trew, 14, and Ruby Trew, 15, (no relation) and Finland’s youngest Olympic athlete, Australian citizen Heili Sirvio, 13, in a field dominated by teens and tweens.

China’s Zheng HaoHao, 11, is the youngest Paris 2024 Olympian. Credit: Getty Images

Haohao bowed out in the heats. A gravity-defying Arisa Trew claimed victory, becoming Australia’s youngest gold medallist. Last week, a 14-year-old street skater from Japan also finished first. Her competitors’ average age was 15.8 years. Gymnastics has never produced a field that young, not even at its most notorious and exploitative heights.

The smiling, robust kids ripping around the skate park at La Concorde this week have little in common with the starved children from the old gymnastics academies, who were cut off from their parents and ate toothpaste because they were so hungry.

They are doing extraordinary things, and inspiring girls across Australia. But they are young. “A year ago, I didn’t even know what the Olympics was,” said Ruby Trew.

The re-emergence of an event dominated by girls rather than women has raised questions, not only about whether an 11-year-old is too young for Olympic competition, but whether the concentration of teens means the sport itself is too immature for the Games.

Australia’s Arisa Trew, 14, and Ruby Trew, 15, (no relation) before they competed in the park skateboard event.Credit: Simon Trew

The youngest-ever Olympic medallist was a 10-year-old gymnast, in 1896. A handful of 12-year-olds won bronze medals in 1928 and 1936, but the Olympics did not see another pre-teen on the podium for almost 100 years, until skateboarding was introduced in Tokyo.

It’s only the female skaters who are so young. Australia had a 34-year-old competing in the male street event (Britain had a 51-year-old) but the team’s only female who has graduated from her teens is 20-year-old Olivia Lovelace, who didn’t make it to the final last week.

Theories abound about why there’s a difference with female competitors. Some say it’s a low centre of gravity and youthful fearlessness, others say the increase in body fat triggered by puberty makes landing wild tricks harder (puberty has been described as the “invisible enemy” in figure skating, too).

The dominant view is that skateboarding was a hypermasculine culture for so long – think Lords of Dogtown – that the women’s competition has had less time to evolve. That misogyny problem hasn’t gone away: a study found female skaters are subject to vile abuse online, with comments such as “girls, please stay in the kitchen” and “Welcome to womanhoodsville, where you get 1000 x the attention with 1000th of the effort”.

Luke MacDonald, Skate Australia’s performance pathways manager, says no one has any definitive answers. “There needs to be further investigation as to why [the athletes are young], and whether there are opportunities to try to prolong the peak age in the sport,” he said.

A Finnish coach, Jussi Korhonen, said male skaters were once that young, too. The sport was evolving at a fast pace, and he predicts that “within a decade, we will see that [both men and women] will be in their 20s”.

The kids rolling around the arena with their boards and baggy pants in Paris this week seem relaxed and happy, but history has also taught us that the hungry world of high-level sports can leave minors vulnerable to unscrupulous adults.

Gymnastics is a tragic example. For decades, academies – such as the ones run notoriously in the former Eastern Bloc – devoured children because they were easier to control. The discipline was ruthless, their parents were shut out, their bodies were starved, and they had no say. Some were sexually abused.

Scandals led to key rule changes that opened the sport up to mature women, including less onerous physical demands and a minimum age of 16 (diving has a minimum age of 14, boxing of 18, while swimming, athletics, skateboarding and surfing have no limit).

The results have been on spectacular display in Paris. Simone Biles, at 27, is the oldest individual all-around gold medallist since 1952, and most of the gold medal-winning gymnasts in the US team are in their 20s. The average age hit a low point of 16.4 in 1980 and is now 20.

Simone Biles is the oldest US athlete to win the individual all-around gymnastics gold since the 1950s. Credit: Getty Images

Yet other sports, such as figure skating, are still struggling to stop girls from ageing out of the sport once they become women.

In Australia, at least, skateboarding doesn’t have an issue with intensive coaching or excessive control. For many of the athletes, there’s barely any at all. Street skater Chloe Covell is coached by her father, former rugby league player Luke, who considers himself a glorified bag carrier.

She runs the show in the arena, and the adults are there to make sure she’s OK. He defends the teens’ right to be in Paris. “It’s not their fault that they’re better than older people,” he said.

Arisa Trew flies high on her way to gold in the women’s park skateboarding. Credit: Eddie Jim

“It’s a bit hard to talk on behalf of other cultures and countries, and I’m sure there’s potential that maybe things aren’t done the right way, but I see these kids skating around at all these events, and to me they look like they’re all having a ball.”

Covell was disappointed after the street skating final last week when she didn’t land any of her tricks. But she bounces back, says her father. She does big competitions often, and knows “there are winners and losers; some days, it’s your day, and some days, it’s not”.

Not every kid is as resilient as Covell. “I have mixed emotions about [the youth of the competitors],” US street skater Poe Pinson told the New York Times this week. “I’m not a huge fan of all the pressure that is put on some people.”

As she bowed out of her competition on Tuesday, Ruby Trew, 15, said the Olympics were different to those other competitions. “It’s streamed worldwide, there’s people all over the country watching you,” she said.

Chloe Covell is coached by her father, former NRL player Luke, who calls himself a glorified bag holder.Credit: Getty Images

Child psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg said there was no definitive answer about how young was too young for Olympic-level sport. “The varying age limits reflect attempts to balance competitiveness with athlete welfare and development across different sports,” he said.

“If I was a carer, I’d be making sure the young person demonstrates an ability to recover from setbacks, maintain focus under pressure, was able to manage emotions, behaviours, and thoughts to achieve long-term success.”

Rules to safeguard minors have also come a long way. In a statement, the Australian Olympic Committee said it had hired former Olympic diver Brittany Broben, who competed in London as a minor (aged 16), to chaperone and mentor the under 18s in Paris, most of whom – bar a 16-year-old trampolinist – are female skateboarders.

“In addition to the support via the high-performance department with access to coaches, physios, psychologists, and Athlete Wellbeing Managers, Skate Australia also adds extra support for minors,” it said.

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