Brighton Zeuner is doing something that not too many other teens are — she's heading to Tokyo for the Olympics. And when she competes, she'll be 17 years old.
While skateboarding may be her main passion, Brighton is different from some of the other teens who'll be competing. For one, she realizes that her sport is only part of who she is as a person, and she strives to still hold onto her childhood when she can.
While it's a prestigious honor to compete in the Olympics, it's still important to remember that those bound for the big games have a different childhood overall. Many kids are pulled out of school for practices and meets. Others spend all of their free time at the gym to try to qualify for this big moment.
Born in 2004, Brighton won her first title back in 2017, when she played in the X Games around the time she was entering her teen years. Born in Scottsdale, Arizona, she and her family are currently living in Encinitas, California. Luckily, she seems to have found a great school that supports her athletic schedule.
"I've got to stay a kid," she told People. And it seems like while she's putting a lot of her focus on skateboarding, there are plenty of other projects that Brighton is involved with. For one, she already has a partnership with Vans.
"Currently backed by Frog Skateboards, Brighton is known for her distinct taste and personal style and enjoys vintage thrifting in her spare time," says the Vans website. "Zeuner may as well be the future of the sport, an icon for inspiring women skateboarders, and Vans is proud to back her all the way to 2020 as she takes on the world stage." The Olympics were supposed to occur in 2020 but got postponed to 2021.
What got Brighton Zeuner into skateboarding in the first place? Since Brighton has a ton of different interests — from a possible future in fashion to shopping like most other teens — it may seem odd that she'd take up such a male-dominated sport. But that's what makes her important. Girls should be skateboarding, and Brighton is proof that they can be incredibly successful.
As it turns out, she started skateboarding young after visiting skate parks with her brother. Even at the age of 4, she was showing that she could easily master the sport. According to Shape, she was only 8 when she started competing in local amateur competitions.
Although she participates in competitions, one of Brighton's methods of success is to not be bent out of shape when it comes to a loss. "I just like performing for other people and showing skateboarding to the world," she told the publication. "This is what I grew up doing. This is what I love and I don't need to win every contest to feel important."
Brighton's parents agree, which is also good. Sometimes, parents may push their kids into sports and activities that they're not ready for. But it seems like they're much more concerned about Brighton as a person and a kid, as opposed to Brighton as an Olympic skateboarder.
"It can be a job at times. We want her to be a child, a normal kid, but before [the health crisis] she was in China two or three times a year, in Europe, Brazil for two weeks at a time," her father, Brandon, told Sports Illustrated. "She didn't have a proper birthday until this year."
It was during early childhood when Brandon and her mother, Bridget, realized that Brighton was naturally talented. As they told Sports Illustrated, they took video of her "dropping into 10 foot bowls and doing things that weren’t normal." That's when they realized, "Maybe this is her thing."
As Brighton stated, one of the things she loved about the sport, in comparison to the others she tried, is the fact that you can get creative with skateboarding. "When I would do Girl Scouts or softball, or I tried ballet dancing, figure skating, all that, when my mom would take me to practice I didn't really want to go," she said. "But when I first started skating, it was a totally different feeling, like it was just different. There were no rules you had to follow."
"I thought it was cool that you could invent your own tricks and then other people could do them," she added. "And when you'd go to a skate park, it was like daycare almost. I would feel like an adult, like, I can just get dropped off at the skate park! And then I just started realizing I couldn't live without it."
Brighton's fresh attitude makes her one to watch at the Olympics. And she seems like the kind of person who'll just be happy to be there, win or lose. It's hard for athletes to try to balance their lives to have fun as well, but she's doing the best she can — and it shows.
