LUCK Y TO BE ALIVE!
BRITAIN’S 11-year-old skateboarder Sky Brown said she is “lucky to be alive” after a catastrophic fall while training in California. Brown, who is hoping to become England’s country’s youngest Summer Olympian at Tokyo 2020, suffered skull fractures and broke her left wrist and hand.
According to the BBC, she was unresponsive on arrival after being airlifted to hospital, but her family now said she should make a full recovery.
“Sky landed head-first off a ramp on her hand,” her father Stewart said. “When she first came to hospital, everyone was fearful for her life. Sky had the gnarliest fall she’s ever had and is lucky to be alive.”
“Sky remains positive and strong, the whole medical team is shocked to see her positivity,” the elder Brown added.
Born in Japan to a Japanese mother and a British father, Brown became the youngest to take part in the Vans US Open in 2016 when she was just eight years old.
Brown is also an avid surfer. Last year, she won bronze at the World Skateboarding Championship in São Paulo in Brazil.
Skateboarding is scheduled to make its Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020, which has been pushed back to next year because of Covid-19.
In a video on Instagram, Brown said: “I’m going to push boundaries for girls with skating and surfing. I’m going for gold in 2021 and nothing will stop me.”
The International Olympic Committee (IOC)
Executive Board, meanwhile, approved rule changes made to the qualification process for the Tokyo 2020 skateboarding competition.
The original qualification schedule was thrown into disarray after the coronavirus pandemic forced the rescheduling of Olympics Games to July 23 to August 8 in 2021 and stopped numerous qualifiers taking place.
World Skate spent March and April reviewing the qualification rules and decided to extend season two, the current Olympic qualification period, until June 29 2021.
The best four results during this time will count towards qualification.
There will be no change to event tiering, points system and points already acquired or the quota system in place.
National championship scores are set to be added to the World Skate rankings quarterly, while scores from continental championships will be added to the rankings once all events have been held.
These rules will now be implemented having received approval from the IOC Executive Board.
National bodies, athletes and team managers attended online meetings with World Skate to receive updated information on the Olympic qualification process and ask questions.
Events in China, Peru and the United States were among the Olympic skateboarding qualifiers postponed or cancelled because of the pandemic, which still means international competition is almost impossible to stage.