We profile ten sporting prodigies who not only hit the Olympic stage at an age where most youngsters are beginning to understand their sports, but win at the Olympic Games.
Dimitros Loundras
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Greek gymnast Dimitros Loundras was only 10 years and 218 days old when he competed in the 1896 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. The young athlete was part of the Ethnikos Gymnastikos Syllogos, whose gymnasts represented Greece at the team parallel bars event.
They would go on to win the bronze medal at the event, with Loundras the youngest ever awardee of an Olympic medal 3 months shy of his 11th birthday.
Loundras remains, to this day, the youngest ever awardee of any Olympic medal. The 1896-born gymnast passed away in 1971.
Nils Skoglund
Stockholm-born Nils Skoglund competed in the Olympic Games of 1920 in Antwerp, Belgium, in the plain high diving event. The young diver took second prize at the event, beating older and more experienced athletes than himself.
At the time of his silver medal victory, Skoglund was fresh off his 14th birthday – he was 14 years, 11 days old. He became the the youngest ever individual Olympic medal winner that year, setting a world – and Games – record.
He remains the youngest ever medallist at the Summer Olympics.
Skoglund retired from diving immediately after the Games, switching his focus to water polo instead. His older brother went on to compete in the 1924 Olympics as a swimmer, but did not enjoy the success of his younger sibling.
Toni Niemenen
Ski jumper Toni Niemenen of Finland took part in the 1992 Olympic Games in Albertville, France, fresh off a successful World Cup season. At that World Cup, the Finnish teen took both individual and team medals, and was voted the country’s sportsperson of the year.
In 1992, Niemenen won top honours at the Individual ski jumping event, and with his gold medal victory became the youngest ever individual gold medal winner in the history of the Olympic Games. He was 16 years and 261 days old at the time of his win.
Niemenen also won the team event in the same discipline at the same Olympic Games, bringing him to two gold medals. That was not the end of his medal tally at the event; he also won bronze at the Nansen ski jump, giving him a total of three medals at a single Olympics at only 16 years of age.
He retired from ski jumping in 2004, working as a sports commentator in the interim, but earlier this year announced he would be returning to the sport, with the aim of competing at another World Cup.
Kim Yun-Mi
Short-track speed skater Kim Yun-Mi of South Korea took part in the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway at the age of thirteen. She was immensely successful, winning gold in the 3000m relay event that year.
In doing so, Kim became the youngest ever female Olympic Gold medal winner – and the youngest ever winner of a medal at the Winter Olympic Games. Both records still stand, and are yet to be broken two decades on.
Kim followed up that 1994 performance with gold in the same event at the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan.
The 35-year-old now teaches speed skating in the United States of America.
Inge Sorensen
Danish swimmer Inge Sorensen, born in July 1924, medalled at the 1936 Summer Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, barely a month after her 12th birthday.
Sorensen peaked early in her career – her Olympic third-place win was the first victory of her career. Winning the bronze at the 200m breastroke, Sorensen became the youngest known female Olympic medalist in an individual discipline.
She moved to the United States later in life, and passed away in New Jersey in 2011, aged 86.
Marjorie Gestring
1922-born springboard diver Marjorie Gestring competed in the Olympic Games of 1936 in Berlin, Germany at the age of 13. By then already a multiple-time National Award-winning springboard diver, American Gestring took part in the 3m springboard diving event, winning gold.
She was 13 years and 268 days old at the time of her win, making her the youngest ever person to win Olympic gold.
Gestring was due to participate in the Olympic Games in 1940, scheduled to take place in Tokyo, Japan, with the games cancelled with the outbreak of World War II; the United States Olympic Committee, in light of events, gave Gestring another gold medal.
After a short break, Gestring tried out for the 1948 Olympic squad but was unable to make the team.
Gestring set the age record 8 decades ago, a record that is yet to be broken; given tha the Olympic threshold age for athletes is now 14 years, her record looks to be secure.
She passed away in 1992 in California at the age of 69.
Fu Mingxia
Chinese diver Fu Mingxia was incredibly successful at her sport even prior to Olympic victory. 1978-born Mingxia won the gold medal at the World Diving Championships in 1991 aged only 12, a victory that made her the youngest diving champion in the history of the tournament.
The following year, Mingxia competed in the Olympic Games in Barcelona, winning gold at the platform diving event in 1992 at the age of 13.
In the coming years, Mingxia would win another three Olympic gold medals and a silver, across the platform and springboard events.
She took a short retirement after the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, where she won two gold medals, returning to Sydney in 2000 to win a silver there; she eventually retired after this, and today remains one of the most decorated athletes of all time.
Nadia Comaneci
She’s now become iconic for her ‘Perfect 10’ finish, and Nadia Comaneci is widely considered one of the greatest gymnasts of all time. Romanian-born Comaneci trained as a gymnast as a young child, participating in the Romanian National Championships in 1969 aged only 8..
At 13-years-old, Comaneci nearly took a clean sweep at the 1975 European Championships in Norway, winning gold in every event except the floor exercise, where she won silver. That year was a particularly strong one for Comaneci, who also won top prizes at the Romanian National Championships. At the American Cup of that year, Comaneci first won her now-famous ‘perfect 10’ – scores with no deductions – on the vaults and uneven bars.
It was the following year – 1976 – that saw Comaneci catapulted to international renown. Participating in the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, Canada, the Romanian gymnast again pulled off a perfect ten in the uneven bars, for the first time in the history of the modern Olympics. It had been so unexpected that the scoreboard was not equipped to display the score.
She eventually won six perfect ten scores across events in Montreal, ending those Olympics with 3 gold medals, a silver and a bronze.
Comaneci was 15 years old at the time.
She would eventually defect to Montreal and then the United States, where she currently resides.
Barbara Pearl Jones
Elite athlete Barbara Pearl Jones of the United States of America was part of the 4x100m relay team that took part in the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, Finland and would go on to win gold in the event. Jones was only 15 years old at the time, and at the Games became the youngest ever woman to win an Olympic gold medal in athletics.
Jones was also part of the 4x100m relay team that competed in the 1960 Olympics in Rome, Italy, with the team taking gold again.
She is an active part of the US athletics scene, now in an advisory role, as a member of the US Paralympic Games Committee.
Bob Mathias
American decathlete Robert ‘Bob’ Mathias was a gifted track-and-field athlete in high school, qualifying for the Olympics in his senior year. He was on the team that went to the 1948 Summer Olympic Games in London – but he went to the games with not much awareness of the Decathlon, its rules and regulations, or the conditions he had to follow.
That lack of awareness almost cost Mathias his participation. Taking part in the shot put, he was unaware of the rules and found himself on the verge of disqualification. After this, he also almost crashed out of the high jump event, but managed to recover from that as well.
Mathias would eventually go on to win the Olympic gold medal that year, and at 17 then became the youngest ever athlete to win gold at an Olympic track-and-field event. In between the 1948 and 1952 Olympics, Mathias pursued a college degree, then went on to win gold yet again in the same event at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki.
He had an active political career in California after retiring from athletics, and eventually lost his battle to cancer in 2006.
