Paris 2024: Meet 11-year-old heading to Olympics

The Paris 2024 Olympic Games will feature a mix of legendary athletes and rising stars striving for glory at the global multisport event.

When the world assemble in Paris later this month, Haohao will be the youngest Olympian among the lot.

She secured her spot at the Games through the Pre-Olympic Skating events held in Shanghai and Budapest.

At 11, she will participate in a discipline that, at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, showcased the youngest podium in Olympic history.

That event saw Japan’s Nishiya Momiji win gold at 13, Brazil’s Rayssa Leal take silver, also at 13, and Japan’s Nakayama Funa claim bronze at 16.

The Chinese could become the youngest medalist in summer Olympics history she claims a medal in Paris. The current record is held by American Marjorie Gestring, who won gold in springboard diving at the age of 13 years and 268 days during the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

At the Tokyo 2020 Games, 12-year-old Kokona Hiraki became the youngest Olympic medalist in 85 years by winning silver in the women’s park skateboarding event.

Despite her young age, Haohao won’t be the youngest competitor or medalist in Olympic history.

That record belongs to Greece’s Dimitrios Loundras, who was just 10 years and 218 days old when he earned a bronze medal in the team gymnastics event at the 1896 Athens Games.