Australian News Today

‘You’ve just got to go all out’: How an Aussie teenager wrote herself into the Olympic record books

‘You’ve just got to go all out’: How an Aussie teenager wrote herself into the Olympic record books

Skateboarder Arisa Trew has become Australia’s youngest Olympic gold medallist by winning the women’s park final in Paris.

Aged 14 years and 86 days, Trew eclipses the milestone achieved by Australia’s previous youngest medallist, swimmer Sandra Morgan.

Morgan was 14 years and 184 days old when she won gold in the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.

“I got told by a few people that I’m Australia’s youngest gold medallist, which is, like, pretty insane,” Trew said.

“And really cool, because that’s who I’m representing and it’s just amazing.

“It’s just, super cool that I have won the gold medal because it has been like a dream.

“I’m just so excited.”

Trew won Australia’s 14th gold medal of the Paris Games.(AP: Frank Franklin II)

She captured Australia’s 14th gold medal of the Paris Games in stunning style.

Trew recorded a top-scoring run of 93.18 at La Concorde in central Paris in the final on Wednesday morning (Australian time).

Japan’s Cocona Hiraki (92.63) finished with silver and Great Britain’s Sky Brown (92.31) took the bronze.

Fellow Australian skateboarder Ruby Trew, no relation to Arisa, failed to make the final.

Arisa Trew is the youngest athlete on Australia’s team in Paris and the nation’s seventh-youngest Olympian in history.

Her sensational final run moved her from the bronze medal position into first place.

The Cairns-born skater crashed on the first of her three runs and scored just 35.53.

On her second run, Trew rose to third with a score of 90.11.

Trew then launched an audacious and daring final run that was rewarded with the gold.

“My coach was like, ‘You’ve just got to go all out,’ and I was like, ‘Yep, who cares?'” Trew said.

“I just [went] all or nothing.”

Arisa Trew smiles during women's park final in the skateboarding program at Paris Olympics.

Trew showed cool nerves to move up the leaderboard in her final run.(Getty Images: Alex Pantling)

In the bronze medal position before her third and last run, coach Trevor Ward pulled her aside.

“We’ve got some crazy things that we say to each other and I just said the crazy things that we say — skibidi sigma,” Ward said.

According to urban dictionaries, skibidi is nonsense slang without a specific meaning.

But to Trew, it resonated.

“It’s like a joke that I have with all my friends because, like, it’s just, like, sigma is, like, the top,” she said.

“A lot of kids nowadays say that a lot.”

Trew’s gold medal feat followed a shaky qualifying session when she advanced to the final ranked six of the eight skaters.

But her triumph continues an eye-catching stretch of form.

She won Olympic qualifying events in Shanghai and Budapest to punch her ticket to Paris.

The victory for Trew, who started skateboarding seven years ago, follows her win in this year’s Laureus World Sports Awards for Action Sportsperson of the Year.

Australia’s youngest Olympian is rower Ian Johnston, who was aged 13 years and 75 days when he competed in the coxed fours at the 1960 Rome Games.

AAP/ABC

Sports content to make you think… or allow you not to. A newsletter delivered each Saturday.

Posted , updated