China's Cui Chenxi finishes WST Street World Championship final in 8th

13-year-old Cui Chenxi of China finished on Sunday her first World Skateboarding Tour (WST) Street World Championship final in Tokyo, Japan, coming in eighth place.

Cui won the skateboarding women's street gold medal at the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, back in September. She was the youngest of China's 886 athletes and became the youngest Chinese gold medalist in the Asian Games history.

Cui began to play with skateboard when she was three, influenced by her father. She came in second in the Chinese national skateboarding elite championship women's group in April 2020 after less than two years of amateur training. One year later, Cui finished third at the local games of east China's Shandong Province before being recruited for the provincial team for more systematic and professional training sessions.

After just over three years of practice, Cui became a member of the Chinese national skateboarding team and then made her country proud in Hangzhou.

Skateboarding has been a sport for youngsters since it was born. All of the 12 Chinese athletes of this sport at the 19th Asian Games are teenagers. Mazel Paris Alegado from the Philippines participated in the skateboarding women's park event in Hangzhou and she was only nine, the youngest of all athletes.

The WST Street World Championship is part of the qualification events for snowboarding at the Summer Olympic Games in Paris in 2024. The qualification system will be based on the world rankings maintained by World Skate, the international governing body of the sport. During the Olympic qualifying period between June 22, 2022 and June 23, 2024, athletes need to participate in events sanctioned by World Skate to earn points and improve their rankings.

Skateboarding made its debut at the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021 and will include four events, namely the men's park, the women's park, the men's street and the women's street events at Paris 2024. The competitions will take place at Place de la Concorde in Paris from July 27 to August 7, 2024.