PARIS: Australian teenage skateboarding sensation Arisa Trew won the women's park event at the Paris Olympics on Tuesday to become her country's youngest ever gold medallist.
Trew, 14, nailed a high-risk and high-speed final round in her trademark pink helmet to leap to the top of the rankings, bringing the crowd to their feet at a sun-drenched Place de la Concorde stadium.
Japan's Cocona Hiraki won silver, adding to the silver she won at the 2020 Tokyo Games when skateboarding was first introduced as an Olympic sport, after two typically smooth and high-scoring runs.
But she was eclipsed by Trew's spectacular last routine, with Britain's injured Sky Brown taking bronze again after a third-place finish in Tokyo three years ago.
"I was just thinking on my third round that I had to land it no matter what because I just wanted to secure myself on the podium," Trew, who was in third before her final round, told reporters.
The big-ramp specialist has pushed the frontiers of women's skateboarding in her short career.
She was the first to land a 720 in competition – two mid-air rotations – and then a 900 – two and a half rotations – in training in May this year, drawing praise from skateboarding legend Tony Hawk.
"Glass ceilings are so 2023," Hawk wrote on Instagram in May over a video of Trew performing the 900 on a so-called "vert" or vertical ramp and looking shocked as she lands the trick.
The Cairns-born high school pupil had said before the Games that spectators should look out for her 540s in the Paris park, which she pulled off effortlessly in her final round.
"She's so driven," fellow skater Bryce Wettstein, who finished sixth, told reporters. "She takes one thing and she'll build on it and build on it."
Britain's Brown, 16, dislocated her shoulder less than a fortnight ago and performed with heavy strapping in the heats earlier Tuesday and in the finals, with falls in both drawing gasps from the crowd.
"It was definitely a little scary falling on my shoulder," she told reporters afterwards. "I did fight through it and gave it my best."
She said the level of women's skateboarding had risen sharply since Tokyo three years ago and praised the role of the Olympics in helping bring attention to the sport.
"The sport overall has grown, more people getting into it, more skate parks," she said.
"It's just been really good for the sport... you just watch the girls and we've still got some work to do, but we're definitely closing the gender gap. I think there'll be more girls coming in for the next one and it's gonna be a whole next level."
Japan has again dominated skateboarding at the Paris Games, having claimed three of four gold medals on offer at the Tokyo Games.
Japan's Yuto Horigome and Coco Yoshizawa won golds in the men's and women's street competitions last week.
The country was represented on every level of the podium on Tuesday evening for the women's park, with Hiraki in silver while Trew and Brown both have Japanese mothers.
Skateboarding made its debut as an Olympic sport in Tokyo and has been retained as organisers attempt to reach new and younger audiences.
It features two disciplines – park and street – with athletes judged on the degree of difficulty, speed and range of their moves.
Tuesday's event also featured 11-year-old Zheng Haohao, the youngest athlete ever to represent China at the Olympic Games, who failed to make it to the final.
"Skateboarding in the Olympic Games isn't much different from skateboarding in my neighbourhood. It's just more spectators," she told reporters. -- AFP