For 14-year-old skateboarder Fay De Fazio Ebert, age is just a number
Canadian set to make Olympic debut in park competition on Tuesday
The boat parade down the Seine had just ended, it was pouring rain and suddenly the Canadians were sprinting.
Fay De Fazio Ebert, the 14-year-old skateboarder who is Canada's youngest Olympian in Paris, was caught in the middle of the rush.
"I'm like, why is everybody running right now? And I look up and the Eiffel Tower is there, like so close to us," De Fazio Ebert recalled of her opening ceremony experience.
"And then we go into the little stadium area, but it's still open, so it's still pouring rain. And they do a few more performances and stuff. The Eiffel Tower turns dark and it starts like lighting up and doing this whole light show. And it was so amazing. It was so sick."
At that moment, the spectacle of the Olympics revealed itself to De Fazio Ebert. But the Toronto native does not seem fazed ahead of her park competition on Tuesday.
"It just kind of feels like every other contest because I've been going to these World Skate contests for so long. It's just another competition," she said.
WATCH | De Fazio Ebert relives Pan Am gold-medal run:
De Fazio Ebert has skated internationally since 2019, when she made her debut at the world championships in Brazil on a direct-message invite from Canada Skateboard. She won gold at the Pan Am Games last year.
The Olympics, of course, are on another level. But you'd never know from the way De Fazio Ebert talks about it.
The mindset seems to come from her mom, Elizabeth De Fazio, who over the past five years has travelled the world with her daughter and partially funded her athletic endeavours.
The two will often fly to California for training as Fay De Fazio Ebert has not yet found a coach in Toronto. Instead, her mom usually just sits and watches her daughter practice tricks at various bowls in the city.
It's a setup Elizabeth doesn't always love — she'd prefer to have clear separation between parent and coach. And she wants Fay to chart her own path as an athlete.
"When you talk to her, I'm not there hovering on top of her. I don't want to be because that's not that's not going to give you who she is. We want people to see that she's a normal kid. She's a 14-year-old girl. She's creative. She could be silly. She has her own mind and brain and she should be able to share that with people to understand that she's not a robot," De Fazio said.
Skateboarding age range
After all, she is essentially a veteran in her sport — the 14-year-old will skate against China's Zheng Haohao, who on Aug. 11 will turn all of 12 years old. The gold medal in the street competition was taken by 14-year-old Coco Yoshizawa of Japan.
Oddly, though, skateboarding offers a wide age range. Andy MacDonald, who turned 51 on July 31, will make his Olympic debut and possibly receive guidance from Great Britain teammate Sky Brown, the 16-year-old who also competed in Tokyo.
"We all share this bond," MacDonald said. "I've shared it with many, many more people than they have, but I'm still enjoying it. Skateboarding is literally my fountain of youth."
MacDonald added that he is often amused by people's amazement that he's in the Olympics at his age.
"But if you ask my 16-year-old teammates, they're just like, 'Yeah, that's Andy. He's always been here.' I've been around, and it's neat because skateboarding is old enough now that it's got this history, and I'm part of it," he said.
"I can watch my teenage teammates going for a new trick and chances are I know who invented that trick, or I was there when it was invented, or I invented that trick myself."
For De Fazio Ebert, on the other end of that spectrum, she said the amazement from fellow athletes in Paris has been more muted.
"They all think it's like super sick and super cool. And some people ask me like, oh, hey, you're the youngest athlete? I'm like, yeah," she said emphatically. "I guess, yeah."
Staying cool as pressure approaches
Elizabeth said Fay was up until 6 a.m. local following the opening ceremony on a dopamine rush. They travelled to Capbreton, France, the next day for a staging camp where the 14-year-old has been training ever since.
They'll soon return to Paris, where they'll be met by Fay's brother Adrian and dad Andrew. Due to Fay's age, the family is staying at a hotel outside the Athletes' Village.
The skateboarder added that she wished she could stay in the village instead.
"It feels like everybody's there for the same reason. Everybody's really focused and it feels like it's a kind of cozy feeling where everybody's, especially with the Canadians, everybody's very welcoming. And the energy was so chill," she said.
Soon, though, the Olympics may become less chill for De Fazio Ebert.
In the street competition, 14-year-old Australian Chloe Covell qualified in fourth place but crashed in the final, bringing her to tears. Her father and coach, Luke Covell, consoled her.
Elizabeth said the moment resonated.
"Skateboarding is really hard. People fall a lot, right? Like it's hard and I've seen it. Fay's had her moments too. She's human. All these people are human beings and they're going to have those moments that are going to feel like that," she said.
For now, though, Fay is staying cool.
"I'm really excited to skate the park because it kind of feels like the bowl looks like a bunch of the other contest bowls, so I think I'm pretty ready," she said. "And we get four days of practice for two hours and we usually do not get that much time. So I'm feeling really good."
