What were you doing when you were 13? Making friendship bracelets? Playing with Lego? Messing about on your bike? Chances are you probably weren’t on an Olympic podium picking up a bronze medal. But that’s exactly what Sky Brown, skateboard wunderkind and new best Tag Heuer replica watches ambassador, was doing at the Tokyo 2020 (technically 2021) Games.
“I was supposed to do two safer runs but decided at the last moment to go for it,” Brown recalls. She is fresh from showing off her best tricks beside the Thames on an enormous half-pipe set up between two double-decker buses, organised for her by 1:1 Swiss Tag Heuer fake watches. Seeing her in action, it’s easy to forget that she is still just 15 years old. There’s an ease and confidence with which she twists and turns mid-air. As she shows off the Japan Air — where the skater’s board is pulled behind their back with their knees pointed down — she is balletic, an aerial dancer in helmet and pads. Then she fails to make a move, slides down the half-pipe and her diminutive size makes you realise that, for all her experience and awards, she is just a teenager. Albeit a very impressive one.
Born in Miyazaki, Japan, to a British father and Japanese mother, Brown has never known life without a skateboard: “It was my favourite toy. My dad skateboarded so I grew up with it.” Her father even built a skate ramp in their back garden because of the dearth of skate parks in Takanabe, where they were living at the time.
Despite her talent — a video of her on a board, aged four, went viral — her parents didn’t push her. “It was me who wanted to compete,” she says. “They only let me when they saw how much I was enjoying it. And I still enjoy it.”
Brown is not exaggerating; she’s always beaming. That infectious smile was even present in a video she posted on Instagram in 2020, when, aged 11, she fell from the top of a half-pipe while training for the Tokyo Games. She suffered life-threatening injuries, including skull fractures and a broken wrist. None of that stopped her and, a year later, she became Britain’s youngest Olympic medallist. And now she hopes to do even better in Paris. “I have definitely grown a lot since Tokyo,” she says. “I have more power.”
Like many skateboarders, Brown doesn’t have a coach. She learns tricks from videos and by skating with fellow Olympian skateboarders. “Of course we all want a gold, but we want the best for each other as well,” she explains.
It’s good to see young women succeeding in a historically male sport. “When I was growing up and going to skate parks, there was a bit of, ‘What are you doing here?’ ” Brown confirms. Here comes that smile again. “I don’t care what they think. I just want to prove them wrong.”
As with everything, Brown is taking in her stride being welcomed into the prestigious cheap UK Tag Heuer copy watches family of sports ambassadors, which has its fair share of Olympians including the American 100, 200 and 400m sprinter Fred Kerley and the Canadian 400m medley swimmer and world record holder Summer McIntosh.
“Watches are an important part of my lifestyle,” says Brown, who is wearing TAG Heuer Aquaracer Professional 200 Solargraph replica watches for sale. “I get carried away easily, skating or surfing [she failed to secure a spot on Team GB’s surfing squad after finishing third in a qualifying event but has set her sights on Los Angeles in 2028]. I need all the help I can get to keep track of time,” she adds with a grin. “And they are supercool too.” And with that she’s off — a 15-year-old champion with the world already at her wheels.