Such determination. Such perseverance. Such pain, surely? It hurts even to watch ten-year-old Sky Brown examining the bruises on her legs.
She has them in all colours, from the palest yellow to the blackest black.
Her brother Ocean, who is seven, has matching ones, she explains. Last night they were having a competition to see who had the most bruises. Sky won. ‘I got to 39,’ she says gleefully. Sky likes to win.
Sky Brown can count 39 bruises after falls practising various tricks on her skateboard while not wearing pads or a helmet
Her Dad Stu is the one who winces. He shows me a video that conveys in graphic detail how such bruises are acquired. It features Sky — the world’s youngest professional skateboarder — arriving at the top of a concrete staircase on her skateboard, then hurling herself off the top step.
She parts company with the board, then attempts to meet it at the bottom. She fails and her little body (just 4 ft tall) smashes to the ground. Somehow, she gets up again and repeats the performance two, six, 20 times.
Eventually she nails that seemingly impossible landing.
Sky performs tricks at the Greystone Action Sports Skateboard park in Salford, Greater Manchester
‘I never say “I can’t”. I might do a trick 99 times, and it won’t work, but on the 100th go, it will. It gets easier after that.’
How she hasn’t broken every bone in her body by now is quite the conundrum, but she’s never had a major injury. What damage to her poor parents’ nerves, though?
‘I hate it when she falls. With some of the bigger tricks, I can’t watch,’ Stu admits. ‘When my wife sees her bruises, she cries. That time with the staircase, her backside was black. But if we try to stop her, Sky begs us to let her. It hurts her more if we say no.’
Her brother Ocean, who is seven, has matching bruises, she explains. Last night they were having a competition to see who had the most bruises. Sky won. ‘I got to 39,’ she says gleefully. Sky likes to win.
In two years’ time, we will know if the agony has been worth it. If all goes according to plan, Sky could become Britain’s youngest ever summer Olympian, leaping not just into the air but into the history books.
The little girl, who lives in Japan but whose father is British and who has a British passport, has become one of five skateboarders selected to receive UK Sport funding to help them qualify for the Tokyo Olympic Games.
The daredevil nature of skateboarding — one of five sports to make their Olympic debuts in 2020 — means it’s likely to attract much media attention. Imagine the frenzy, then, if there is a lone female in the British team — and a child who’s already an Instagram sensation (she has a whopping 344,000 followers).
Does this little dynamo have a hope of winning a medal? Experts think so. Skateboard GB chair Lucy Adams describes her as ‘absolutely phenomenal’, pointing out that she can pull off moves such as a 720, which involves two full mid-air rotations. ‘There are only a handful of girls in the world doing that.’
When she was just eight, Sky was the youngest competitor in the Vans U.S. Open, and placed higher on the leaderboard than women 20 years her senior. This year, she won gold at Simple Session, a women’s contest in Estonia. The course had been designed for men twice her size.
Skateboard GB chair Lucy Adams describes her as ‘absolutely phenomenal’, pointing out that she can pull off moves such as a 720, which involves two full mid-air rotations. ‘There are only a handful of girls in the world doing that'
Today’s venue — a skate park in Salford, Greater Manchester — is pretty much Sky’s UK ‘home’. She certainly seems at ease here.
One minute we are standing together at the edge of an 8ft drop, talking about her favourite pop stars, the next she has tipped her board off the side and disappeared. No helmet. No knee pads. Argh!
‘This is the thing we have most arguments about,’ says her dad. ‘She hates the pads, so we don’t make her wear them for bowls this size — but we do for bigger ones, and when she’s on concrete. We’ve said that if she breaks a bone, we may reconsider.’
Off she goes, arms out, body bending, sun-bleached hair billowing behind. She swooshes up the other side of the bowl, coming right over the edge, and flips her body upside down. Afterwards, she’s grinning ear to ear.
What does it feel like? ‘Like I’m flying,’ she says. ‘The minute I stop, I want to do it again, but higher.’
Her father Stu claims to be a social media novice, and was astonished when the first YouTube video he posted of Sky in action got tens of thousands of hits. Another followed. And another
Do skateboarding prodigies exist? Well, Sky did develop the skills early. Perhaps some of it was in the genes.
Before she was born, her father was a passionate and committed surfer. He admits that when his Japanese wife Meiko gave birth to Sky, he thought those days were over.
‘My attitude to risk changed when I became a dad,’ he says. ‘It seems weird now,
