4 days ago
Coco Yoshizawa: TIME's Girls of the Year List
In high-pressure moments, athletes try their best to quiet their minds. More often than not they fail, as nerves get the best of them.
But at the Paris Olympics last summer, skateboarder Coco Yoshizawa, then just 14, displayed mental maturity far beyond her years. She promised herself that, more than anything, she'd have fun at the Olympics rather than obsess about performance. So when it came time to land the trick that would win her gold—a big spin flip frontside boardslide—the teenage phenom from Japan wasn't flustered. 'My priority was to enjoy it,' says Yoshizawa, now 15, through an interpreter. 'Because of that mindset probably, I was able to remain calm.'
Yoshizawa, who just finished her freshman year of high school, began skating when she was about seven, following in her older brother's footsteps. 'I fell and it would hurt,' she says. 'So I wasn't good at it from the very beginning.' She spent endless hours practicing, however, and while watching the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Yoshizawa realized she could pull off the same tricks as the winners.
In Paris, the oldest medalist in women's street skateboarding was 16. At the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, and beyond, Yoshizawa wants to prove that the so-called 'grown-ups' of skateboarding can earn hardware too. 'I don't want to be feeling like a loser against younger kids,' says Yoshizawa. 'I want to give hope.'
