Do you remember what you were doing at age 14? I bet it wasn’t anything nearly as impressive as representing Canada at the Summer Olympics.
But not everyone is Fay De Fazio Ebert, an Olympic skateboarder from Toronto, who will compete at Paris 2024.
Fay is the youngest of the 338 athletes Canada is sending to Paris. She’s one of 21 teenagers on Team Canada, which includes only a handful of athletes who are still in high school.
De Fazio Ebert has only been skateboarding for six years, starting in 2018 as an eight-year-old. She began competing in small Toronto contests a short time later, mostly against boys who were older than her, according to the Canadian Olympic Committee.
By age nine, De Fazio Ebert was competing at the Vans Park Series in Montreal in July 2019. She debuted at the World Skate Park Championship two months after that.
De Fazio Ebert finished 18th at the 2022 World Skate Park World Championships when she was just 12 years old.
Last October, De Fazio Ebert won gold for Canada at the Pan Am Games as a 13-year-old.
Success in skateboarding at a young age is not unprecedented, even at the highest level.
Skateboarding made its Olympic debut in Tokyo in 2021. Japan’s Momiji Nishiya was crowned the first-ever gold medallist in the women’s street competition at just 13 years old.
In addition to De Fazio Ebert, Team Canada includes two 16-year-olds, one 17-year-old, eight 18-year-olds, and nine 19-year-olds.
The 16-year-olds, Angel Xiao from Markham, Ontario, and Yunjia Zhang (Toronto), both compete in the sport of fencing. Canada’s youngest male athlete is Nicholas Zhang, an 18-year-old fencer from Richmond, BC.
The lone 17-year-old is Summer McIntosh, who competed at age 14 three years ago at the Tokyo Olympics. The Toronto swimmer nearly earned an Olympic medal then with two fourth-place finishes and seems destined for stardom in Paris.
“What is really good after a really long skate, is a nice cold bubble tea” 🧋🛹
‘Dropping in’ with Pan Am Games skateboarding gold medallist Fay De Fazio Ebert 🇨🇦🥇 pic.twitter.com/s0bM0bNvki
— CBC Olympics (@CBCOlympics) November 3, 2023