Credit: Unsplash

Momiji Nishiya is the youngest gold medalist in the history of the games.

Pandemic controversies aside, the currently-running Tokyo 2020 Olympics (or 2021, I guess) has proven itself to be a season of firsts. This years games brought several new events into the rotation, one of the most interesting being skateboarding. In this event, Japan has already secured a gold medal, which is impressive enough in itself, but what makes it even more impressive is the young athlete who secured it. And when I say young, I mean young.

13-year-old Momiji Nishiya is not only the youngest Olympic athlete to ever win a gold medal for Japan, she’s one of the youngest Olympic athletes period. The only younger athlete at the games is 12-year-old Syrian table tennis player Hend Zaza. Alongside Nishiya’s gold medal win in the women’s street skating competition, Japan got a double header with Yuto Horigome’s gold medal win in the men’s division yesterday.

“I welled up in tears because I was beyond happy,” Nishiya said following her victory.

Nishiya stumbled a bit on her first two tricks, which attributed to being stressed, but she brought it home for her final three, beating out Brazilian skater Rayssa Leal. While Leal was saddened by her loss, she was happy for Nishiya, as well as the fact that the event brought more attention to girls’ capability in skateboarding.

“It’s not right to think, well you have to study, you can’t go skating because skating is for boys,” she said. “I think skateboarding is for everyone.”

13-year-old gold and silver medalists Momiji Nishiya and Rayssa Leal embrace after an amazing day of #Skateboarding

Keep an eye on these two over the next few decades! #Tokyo2020 | #7Olympics pic.twitter.com/x64VbEdKX9

— 7Olympics (@7olympics) July 26, 2021

USA skater Alexis Sablone echoed Leal’s sentiments, saying “For a long time there were way fewer females doing this and it’s taken until now for enough people to pay attention, to get enough eyes on it, to inspire more girls around the world to start skating.”

“More power to them, it’s wild to see.”