Posing for marie claire in Sydney’s beachside suburb of Tamarama, Australia’s youngest-ever Olympic gold medallist isn’t instantly recognisable – yet. “What are they shooting?” “She looks cool!” say two friends walking past, distracted by the crew and camera set up. “I wonder who that is?” says another passerby on the phone. Others slow down to stare but keep walking.
And then 14-year-old Arisa Trew picks up her skateboard. That skateboard that saw her become the first female to land a “720” (two full mid-air rotations) in a competition in June 2023, and then the first female to land a “900” (two-and-a-half mid-air rotations) less than a year later. That skateboard that saw her win gold in two events at both the 2023 and 2024 X Games in California, come fourth at the World Skateboarding Tour in Dubai earlier this year, and win the 2024 Laureus World Sports Award for Action Sportsperson of the Year.
It’s that skateboard – with its hot-pink and black checkerboard Vans grip tape – that also saw her take home gold from the Skateboarding Women’s Park event at the Paris Olympics. People stop when they see that skateboard. When a speed-walker passes Trew, she leans in and quietly says, “Well done.” A man stops in his tracks, points and says, “I saw you on TV this morning!” (Trew was on breakfast TV before meeting marie claire.) More and more people pause and watch her. Now they know exactly who she is.
Trew has only been home for a couple of weeks since winning the Park event. In her first run, she fell, putting
her points behind the other girls. On her second run, she reached bronze status. Good, but not good enough for Trew, who ramped it up in her third run to score a 93.18 and secure gold. “It was the best feeling when I landed my
third run, because it was my hardest run, and then to see my score and go on the podium, it was just really cool,” she says.
On her first day back in Australia, Trew returned to school. It’s not a regular school, it’s a cool school: a skateboarding and BMX training facility called Level Up Academy on Queensland’s Gold Coast. It promises to be the “only proven pathway to the Olympics for skateboarding”, and with Trew on the role-call, their track record is looking good. Students do three hours of education each morning, and spend the rest of the day in training. She laughs when she says she had a hard time convincing her parents to
let her go. “They had already paid for high school. Then [owner and coach Trevor Ward] finally convinced them.”
The decision has paid off. When Trew started at Level Up, it wasn’t yet a school
and there were only three other girls, who were all older. “I would just skate by myself or with the boys,” she says. Soon, more girls joined, and Ward opened the academy in 2022. “One of my [old] school friends joined, and another girl, and we became best friends. Then there were so many of us that we could have a girls-only lesson, and it was so fun,” she says. Trew’s dad, Simon, says that even after skating all day at school, she can’t get enough: the kids go from training with their coaches straight to their local bowl to keep skating for fun after hours.
“Arisa became the first girl in history to land the 720 in competition…We just didn’t expect it to be on the world stage rather than on our vert ramp back home in Australia.”
– Coach, Trevor Ward
Who is Arisa Trew?
Trew was born in Cairns in Far North Queensland, the only child of Aiko and Simon. When she was little, her dad would put her in a life jacket on the end of his surfboard. She didn’t really have a choice but to inherit his sense of adventure, he says proudly. “I was looking after her and I wanted to go surfing, so I’d sit her on the end of my longboard and off we’d go.” When she was seven and it got too cold to surf in winter, he took her to the skatepark. “My dad taught me how to drop in and do the basic tricks and I just loved it so much,” she says.
Does she have any fear?
No. And has she ever broken a bone? Amazingly, also no.
Trew grew up wanting to be a pro-surfer or skater “or maybe a vet”. For now, animals will have to be a hobby
(she has a blue-tongue lizard named Pearl, and her parents promised her a duck if she won gold) because from here it’s onto Rome, California and Japan for more training sessions and competitions.
Breaking records, not bones
A certain level of fearlessness is a prerequisite for skateboarding champions, especially the ones who want to break records (and not bones). Tony Hawk was the first to land a 720, in 1985 when he was 17 (he went pro at 14). It was an accident: he over-rotated a different trick and another skateboarder, Lance Mountain, talked him into trying to spin twice. After less than an hour, he landed it.
In June 2023, Trew — barely 14 — became the first female to land the trick in a competition, and she did it in front of Hawk at in the Tony Hawk Vert Alert in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her coach, Ward, wrote on Instagram that it didn’t take Trew long at all to learn the gravity-defying move. “We started the process not too long ago and in a few hours she was putting it to wheels,” he wrote in a celebratory post that showed Hawk giving her pointers before the comp. “Arisa became the first girl in history to land the 720 in competition. We knew it was coming soon. We just didn’t expect it to be on the world stage rather than on our vert ramp back home in Australia.”
Trew’s lack of broken bones is more surprising when you consider what it takes to land a 900, and how few people have actually done it. Also pioneered by Hawk, in 1999, a 900 adds another half rotation. The 25th anniversary of Hawk landing the 900 inspired Trew to try it herself. After all, why not? There’s nothing to be afraid of, right? Ward sent her videos of other skateboarders to study, and she tried it over two days at school. She was close to landing it, but was interrupted by the first Olympics qualifier event in Shanghai.
In July this year, while she was training at Woodward West in the States, she tried 17 times before successfully landing the 900, becoming the first female to do so. Hawk even posted a clip of her 900 to his millions of Instagram followers, captioned “Glass ceilings are so 2023.”
Life after Olympic gold
Winning Olympic gold is an achievement some athletes wait their whole careers for. Ticking off that milestone so early begs the question — what’s next? What can possibly top that? After our shoot, Trew and her dad are going to check out nearby Bondi skateparl — they love checking out local spots and can almost rank the entire east coast offering. So, does that mean she’ll be home for a while, resting and taking a break after such a massive achievement?
Not at all. In early September, not long after our marie claire shoot, we got word that Trew had won gold again, this time at the World Skate Games Italia in Rome, where she was crowned Women’s Vert World Champion 2024.
Trew was already the first athlete in XGames history to earn four gold medals before turning 15 — and by the end of September, she’d earned her fifth, at XGames Chiba in Japan. It was her third consecutive XGames gold. “I’m even more happy than my Olympic gold,” she said afterwards.
The next time you see a skater girl with hot-pink gear at your local skatepark, you’ll know exactly who it is.
This article originally appeared on Marie Claire Australia and is republished here with permission.
