Sky Brown produced a brilliant, brave performance to claim her second successive Olympic bronze medal, despite carrying a shoulder injury that will require surgery once the 2024 Olympics are done.
Brown dislocated her shoulder less than two weeks ago and aggravated the problem during a heavy fall in qualifying, but delivered on her vow to ride through the pain to finish third in the women’s Park final.
Three years ago in Tokyo, the then 13-year-old Brown had become both the youngest Olympian and youngest Olympic medalist in Team GB history.
Now 16, though, she was, remarkably, the oldest member of the podium here, with 14-year-old Arisa Trew taking gold for Australia and 15-year-old Cocona Hiraki of Japan the silver.
Brown narrowly missed out on qualifying for the surfing at these Olympic Games and had only just recovered from a knee problem when injuring her shoulder at the end of last month.
The issue will need surgery now that her campaign in Paris is finished, but she showed little sign of discomfort during her opening run in qualifying, when a score of 84.75 virtually guaranteed her place in the final.
The teenager, however, came off her board and landed heavily on the same troublesome left arm later in qualifying and left the course smiling but obviously in discomfort.
“It was scary falling and feeling it,” she said in a brief interview ahead of the final. “Definitely it’s a little sore but I’m going to push through.
“I’m just going to fight through it for all the girls. It’s why I started competing and it’s why I wanted to be at the Olympics, to fight for them and show them they can do it too.”
No skater in the subsequent heat bettered Brown’s score, meaning she sat fourth among the eight qualifiers heading into the final, where the slate was wiped clean.
She showed few signs of inhibition on her first run, but began with only a solid score of 80.57 after failing to fit her final trick inside the 45 seconds allowed.
In round two, though, she nailed it, leaping into the silver medal position with a huge score of 91.60.
Trew’s sensational effort of 93.18 - the gold medal-winning skate - relegated the Briton to third, but as in Tokyo, when she had snatched bronze with her final run, Brown delivered under pressure, a score of 92.31 enough to guarantee a medal. At that stage it was silver, but with the final run of the day Hiraki went just 0.32 better.
