Australian teen Olympian Chloe Covell reveals iconic new role
Chloe Covell has had the kind of sporting career most people can only dream of.
She's competed in the Olympics for Australia, she's won gold at the X Games and is considered one of the greatest street-style skateboarders currently in the sport.
And now, she has just been made a playable character in the remake of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater + video game, a release which brings two of the most iconic sports games to modern consoles for the very first time.
At just 15 years old, she has just started her senior year of high school. Her dad (former NRL player Luke Covell) was a teenager when the original version of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 released in October 2001.
The Tony Hawk Pro Skater video games were revolutionary when they first came out, changing world wide perceptions of skateboarding, and bringing attention to the sport.
It made Tony Hawk a household name, and made kids in Australia aware of other legendary skaters through the roster of real life athletes they could play as in the video game.
Including Covell in the updated game was a no-brainer for the developers. In fact, she was hand-picked for inclusion by none other than Tony Hawk himself. At a recent event in Los Angeles, Hawk exclusively told news.com.au: 'I saw her skate X Games before she qualified for the Olympics. I remember her trick selection, her sense of confidence at a young age, and I was like, 'she's got to be in it'.'
At the same event, Rodney Mullen, a man who invented many of the most famous modern skateboarding tricks including the ollie, kickflip, heelflip and impossible, and is considered the 'Godfather of freestyle skating' was similarly impressed by Covell's skill. 'Oh my God. Blows my mind to see that much talent coming in.'
However, even with all the praise and accolades she's getting, Covell remains as laid back and down to earth as you'd expect from a skateboarder. 'That they [Tony Hawk and Rodney Mullen] were even just speaking about me is pretty crazy, because they're really good skaters, and really inspirational to me'
For Covell, the experience of having her head scanned into the game was a logistically challenging one, because of the timing.' I had to go to Activision, and it was during school time, so I had to have a tutor. But it was all really fun.'
While many people would get choice paralysis when picking an outfit to be immortalised in a video game that will be played by people all over the world (the remake of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2 sold one million copies in the first two weeks of release Covell found the process easy. 'I just picked my favourite outfit at the time.'
While most of her friends had never heard of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater video games before because 'they're not skaters', Covell's friends are supportive. 'They think it's pretty cool and all of them said they're gonna get it and play it as me as the character, so that will be pretty funny.'
As for Covell, she admits that her skating skills are better in the real world than the digital one, but she plans on splitting her play time between all the playable skaters in the video game. 'There are lots of legendary skaters on there, but it would also be fun to play as myself.'
Back when the original games came out, there weren't many female skaters included, nor were there many female skaters at the parks. According to Covell, the sport is now seeing more of a gender balance, with so many new athletes picking up a board. '[The skating scene in Australia] is really good. Since the Olympics, there's been so many more young kids getting into it, especially girls,' she said. 'It's really amazing to see because even way before I started skating, there was like, no girls at the skate park and when I started skating, sometimes there were girls, and now there's always girls in the skate park.'
She puts this shift down to Skateboarding's inclusion in the Olympics. 'I feel like it was, mostly the Olympics because there's a girls division, so I feel like the girls see it and they think it's cool, so they start trying.'
Now that she's won the X Games, represented her country and been included in the most influential skateboarding video game series of all time, Covell has a new goal on the horizon: perfecting her favourite trick. 'My go to trick that I would usually do, that I'm still trying to work on to get bigger and better at, is switch kick flips down really big steps. I can do them, but I just want to be consistent.'
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3+4 will be available in stores from the 11th of July.
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