BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS
Everyone’s a winner. MARION McMULLEN looks at teenage sporting champs
1 British teen Emma Raducanu was sitting her A levels this summer and now the 18-year-old has become the first British female to win the US Open since Virginia Wade in 1968. Offers have been pouring in for the young tennis star who is represented by super agents IMG and Max Eisenbud, who helped Maria Sharapova become the world’s highest-earning female sports star.
2 Top jockey Lester Piggott was only 12 when he rode his first winner, The Chase, at Haydock Park in 1948. He was 18 when he won his first Derby on Never Say Die. He went on to notch up 4,493 wins during his long racing career.
3 Northern Ireland golfer Rory McIlroy began playing as a toddler and achieved his first holein-one when he was 10. He was 19 when he won the Dubai Desert Classic in 2009.
4 Japan’s Momiji Nishiya was just 13 when she made history this summer by winning gold at the first street skateboard competition at the Tokyo Olympics. She said: “I want to be the famous one who everyone in the world knows. I want to win at Paris 2024.”
5 Track athlete Sir Mo Farah was just 15 when he won his first major national title – the English schools cross country championship – and said “I wished for just one medal as a junior”. He went on to win gold at both the 2012 (right) and 2016 Olympics.
6 Kyoko Iwasaki of Japan became the youngest swimmer ever to claim an Olympic title when she won gold for the 200m breaststroke in Barcelona in 1992 at the age of 14 years and six days old. That was her only Olympic medal and she would go on to become a swimming coach.
7 British sprinter Jonnie Peacock was 19 when he made his mark at the London Paralympic Games in 2012 winning gold in the T44 100m class. He added another gold for the same race in Rio four years later.
8 American golfer Tiger Woods was just two-years-old when he appeared on TV on The Mike Douglas Show, putting with comedy star Bob Hope, and 18 when he became the youngest amateur champion in history. He played his first professional major championship in 1995 at the US Masters Augusta National.
9 American tennis star Tracy Austin was two when she started playing and in 1980, when she was 17, became the youngest US Open female singles champion in history. She became the world’s youngest number one just a few months later.
10 American boxer Cassius Clay (centre), who later changed his name to Muhammad Ali, was 18 when he travelled to Rome to compete in the light heavyweight division at the Olympic Games. He defeated Zbigniew Pietrzykowski in the final to win the gold medal.