Topics: Olympics, Sport, World News
History was made at this year's Olympic Games earlier this week after China's youngest athlete ever performed in front of colossal crowds.
Just days earlier, skateboarder Zheng Haohao's birth date spread like wildfire on social media, leaving countless sport-loving spectators baffled as to how someone so young had been allowed to compete, let alone qualify.
That's because it was previously revealed that she was born slap bang in the middle of the 2012 sporting tournament in London.
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That's right, the professional sportswoman is just 11-years-old.
Feel old yet? Same, hun.
After learning her age, one fan joked online: "I've been playing minecraft longer than she's been alive, now I feel old."
As another admitted: "I don’t understand 2012 was two years ago".
Apparently, however, Haohao was well within her right to compete this week, because it turns out, however, that there's actually no age limit for participating in the Olympic Games.
Rather, it is down to the rules set by the International Sports Federation for each sport, according to the International Olympic Committee.
And by the looks of things, the rising star has used controversy surrounding her age to fuel her ambition.
Posting previously to the Chinese social media site Weibo, she wrote: "I don’t want to put any pressure on myself. I just want to show my best in Paris."
She added: "I want to tell the world that, even though I am young, I can skate well. I want to fulfil the dreams many adults have."
And thankfully, left spectators wowed by her capability during yesterday's performance.
Haohao took to the bowl in Paris on Tuesday (6 Aug), where she performed in the women's park prelims.
Though fans couldn't deny the potential that the pre-teen demonstrated, she sadly fell short of the requirements needed to advance any further in the competition.
In the first set of heats, Haohao fell in two out of three of her runs, leaving eight more successful competitors storming ahead.
We have no doubt that the child prodigy will recover from the devastating loss and return for the 2028 games in Los Angeles bigger and better than ever.
Lifting the lid on her recently-discovered passion in conversation with press prior to this year's games, she revealed: "I started skateboarding just to make new friends and have fun."
And in another interview with China Daily, she surprised fans by revealing that skateboarding wasn’t her favourite sport initially, and that it was rollerskating before she made the switch.
She said: "Since I was introduced to skateboarding, [roller skating] dropped to second place."
