By: Maggie Z

At just fourteen years and five months, Chloe Covell is aiming to become the youngest Australian to win gold at the Paris Olympics this summer. However, she fell during training before her Olympic Trials. Will that make an impact on her performance in the Olympics?

On July 23, 2024, Chloe Covell made it to the Olympics by qualifying for her team with an overall score of 261.47, ranking fifth out of the eight other people who qualified for the Australian team. That’s very impressive, given the fact that she’s fourteen and just injured two of her fingers.

“Yeah, about two weeks ago I fractured both of my fingers when I was training in LA,” she told reporters at Kids News. “It was just a freak incident. I just slipped . . . and they [my ring and little finger] fully bent back.”

However, she then said that this wasn’t the worst injury she’d suffered. “Big injuries for me are, like, my wrists. I have little bones and . . . in my wrists, the bones chip very easily, and my ankles, they always get chipped quite a bit and I’ve had a couple of stitches and stuff.” She went on to explain that this injury does not concern her much, as skaters don’t usually use their hands while performing.

The youngest Australian athlete to win gold at the Olympic Games is swimmer Sandra Morgan, who was only fourteen years and six months old when she won gold in the 4x100M Freestyle relay in Melbourne in 1956. Chloe has a chance to claim this record if she wins gold in Paris.

Even though Chloe is young, she’s not incapable of achieving great things. Watch her at the Olympic Games!