🇦🇺 Mia Kretzer

Mia Kretzer was born on October 5, 2014, and grew up in Baldivis, a community near Perth in Western Australia. She began skateboarding at the age of five, and, remarkably for an athlete competing at the highest level, she did so without a coach. Largely self-taught, she learned by doing, pushing herself on ramps until difficult tricks became second nature, a path that gave her style an unusually fearless, instinctive quality.

By her ninth year she had progressed to vert skateboarding, the discipline performed on towering half-pipe ramps where competitors launch metres above the coping to perform aerial tricks. It is one of skateboarding's most physically demanding and intimidating formats, dominated historically by seasoned adult professionals. Kretzer, small even for her age, arrived in it as an anomaly, a child among veterans.

Her breakthrough came at X Games Ventura in California in June 2024, in the Women's Skateboard Vert Best Trick event. There, at nine years old, she landed a 720, a trick requiring two complete rotations in the air, to take the gold medal outright. The feat was astonishing not only for her age but for its difficulty: the 720 remains a benchmark trick that many elite skaters spend years chasing.

The record books had to be rewritten around her. Guinness World Records recognised Kretzer with three separate titles from that single competition: the youngest X Games athlete (female), the youngest X Games medallist (female), and the youngest X Games gold medallist (female). She was nine years and 269 days old when she took gold on June 30, 2024, and nine years and eight months when she first competed, making her the youngest athlete ever to appear at the event.

Her reaction was pure, uncomplicated childhood joy. She described the moment as so happy and so crazy, saying she was grateful for it all and still processing that the title was now hers. There was no rehearsed poise, only the delight of a nine-year-old who had done the impossible and knew it, a refreshing contrast to the polished composure the sport's adults often project.

The discipline she conquered is among skateboarding's most fearsome. Vert is performed on towering half-pipe ramps where riders launch several metres above the coping to perform aerial tricks, a format historically ruled by seasoned adult professionals. Kretzer entered it small even for her age, a self-taught child among veterans, and did not merely survive the format but topped it.

The 720 she landed to win gold is the heart of the story. Requiring two complete mid-air rotations, it is a benchmark trick that many elite skaters chase for years and never reliably land. That a nine-year-old stomped it in competition, at X Games Ventura in June 2024, was astonishing on its own terms, quite apart from the records that followed.

Those records came in a cluster. Guinness World Records certified her with three separate titles from that single event, the youngest X Games athlete, medallist and gold medallist (female), at nine years and 269 days old. Featured among the young achievers of the Guinness World Records 2026 book, she has since spoken of aiming for the 2028 Olympic Games, positioning herself as a face of the sport's next generation.

Kretzer's ambitions already stretch well beyond the X Games. She has spoken of wanting to compete at the 2028 Olympic Games, potentially in vert skateboarding, positioning herself as a face of the sport's next generation. Featured among the record-breaking young achievers in the Guinness World Records 2026 book, she has become a symbol of how quickly the ceiling on youth performance is rising, one 720 at a time.