How did teenagers take over the Olympics?

Some of them might not be old enough to vote, but that’s not stopping them from bringing home golds

By Ea Francisco | Lead photo from Instagram

Teenagers definitely took control of the PyeongChang Olympics. There may be more dangerous sports in the Winter Olympics and yet, the younger generation of athletes are getting out there like it’s no one’s business. Older people might call it reckless behavior, but we call it risk-taking. There’s no doubt that this attitude is what’s got them winning medals and breaking records.

Red Gerard

To start off the first US gold in PyeongChang, there’s 17-year-old snowboarder Redmond Gerard who got his first gold in the slopestyle event. You’d think, for his first Olympics, that the morning before his event would go more smoothly but just like the rest of us, he ended up oversleeping. Of course, what else could keep a person up so late before a big competition than Netflix? Gerard was apparently binge watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine before his event (I mean, who wouldn’t), but that didn’t stop him from getting a score of 87.17 on his third run.

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Chloe Kim

Ever wondered what goes on in an Olympian’s head just before their competition? Well for 17-year-old snowboarder Chloe Kim, it was ice cream. She was literally tweeting about her craving in the middle of the women’s halfpipe qualifications. Though, I’m pretty sure she’s not going to have a hard time getting it after winning her first Olympic gold.

Nathan Chen

He may not have landed medals this year but this 18-year-old’s performance is one for the books. Before Chen actually did it last year, nobody thought it was actually possible to do a quintuple quad outside of Yuri!!! On Ice. So what does the nicknamed ‘Quad King’ do? He makes history by doing six (with five of them being clean).

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Vincent Zhou

I don’t know what it is with the US team and their teenage athletes, but a lot of them are breaking Olympic history. The 17-year-old figure skater Vincent Zhou made his Olympic debut with an impressive quadruple lutz, the first of its kind in this competition. This jump is considered one of the most graceful and one of the hardest ones to perfect.

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Izzy Atkin

The European side has their own share of amazing teenagers, too. Though born in America, Isabel “Izzy” Atkins is a 19-year-old freestyle skier competing under Great Britain. It was a lucky break for Britain, too, because Atkins won them their first medal in skiing. She got bronze in the women’s slopestyle event with a score of 84.60 points.

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