Featured Image Credit: Olympics/CGTN Sports scene
Topics: Instagram, Social Media, Olympics, Sport, News
Britt Jones
Topics: Instagram, Social Media, Olympics, Sport, News
Fans of the 2024 Paris Olympics have discovered a new piece of information about one of the athletes and they feel like it’s ‘criminal’.
It’s no surprise that this year’s games are taking over the internet, as we’ve seen a host of controversies and dramatic moments.
From the gender-gate debacle with Algeria's boxer Imane Khelif, to athletes losing their medals due to a little-known rule, there is a lot going on this week for fans to keep up with.
Now, it seems that a birthday is the latest mark on the event which has spun into fans losing their minds in the comments of an identification card post.
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The card in question is none other than Zheng Haohao, a skateboarding athlete from China who is trying her hands at the Olympics for the first time.
As the youngest Olympian this year, she has been turning heads since she landed a 540 spin at the Budapest Olympic Qualifier Series in Hungary.
Competing for the People’s Republic of China, Zheng started her skateboarding journey at seven-years-old and has been a professional in the industry for the last two years.
The reason people are so up in arms about her birth date is that as it happens, she was born during a previous Olympic game in London.
The 2012 London Olympics, to be precise.
The 11-year-old is just two weeks away from her 12th birthday on August 12, and this revelation is making people question their age online.
Commenters who can’t believe her age wrote on Instagram, pointing out that 2012 felt like it was only yesterday.
One person wrote: “I've been playing minecraft longer than she's been alive, now I feel old," as another said: “I don’t understand 2012 was two years ago.”
Someone else wrote: “Gen alpha tony hawk.”
Despite her age - in which there is no age limit for participating in the Olympic Games, according to the International Olympic Committee - the athlete is in it to win.
Posting 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.”
Having played in the World Championships in 2023, she made her debut and finished 23rd in the competition.
She explained the reason she began skating to Xinhua during an interview: “I started skateboarding just to make new friends and have fun.”
In another interview with China Daily, she shared 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.”
Luckily, she knew which sport would be her destiny.
However, it wasn’t a fluke- she looks up to a lot of skateboarders who inspire her to be the best she can be.
Before the games, she said: “I’m a fan of skaters like Sky Brown from Great Britain, Hiraki Kokona from Japan and Arisa Trew from Australia. They really have a lot of style and are some of the best skaters in the world.”