Child prodigy in the halfpipe: this 12-year-old makes world stars look old

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What was your favorite activity when you were twelve years old? Read comics? To draw? Playing catch with friends? It’s probably going this way. Twelve-year-old Chinese girl Patti Zhou, on the other hand, loves nothing more than riding her snowboard down the five-meter high wall of a rock-hard halfpipe and doing a backflip with a twist on the other side. Just like she did for two weeks this fall in Saas-Fee USA. At the most important training camp of the season, the little snowboard queen stole the show from the Olympic and world champions.

The outgoing coach of the Swiss halfpipe team, Pepe Regazzi, also noted Zhou: “It’s crazy what she can do,” he says of the enormous talent. But he’s not totally surprised. “The first stones are laid between five and fifteen years. If you mainly work on coordination during this time, something great can come out of it.”

She’s on top of the world

This is clearly the case with Patti. She first rode a snowboard when she was two years old; her parents owned a snow sports shop. But it wasn’t until the family could no longer return to Beijing after a trip to the US during Corona that Patti’s career really took off.

Last winter, the talent was invited for the first time to the Dew Tour, a competition series for the freestyle sport. In the Superpipe, the XL version of the halfpipe, she raced straight to silver. Never before has such a young driver reached the podium. Since then, Zhou has been regarded in the US as ‘the next big thing’ in the halfpipe discipline. She will revolutionize the sport. An invitation to the X-Games, the most important freestyle competition in the world besides the World Cup and the Olympic Games, will most likely follow in January. If everything goes as usual, the super talent will compete for the podium places.

The fun is still in the foreground

The question rightly arises as to how Zhou can be so good at such a young age. Anyone who thinks of Chinese sports boarding schools where children train with strictness and iron discipline until they are exhausted is wrong in the case of Patti Zhou. Her joy and enthusiasm for the sport is real, you can see it on her face. Pepe Regazzi is convinced that this is one of the reasons why the Chinese are so strong. Another is their training method. Zhou spends every free minute in the summer on his skateboard or surfboard.

Finally, there is an ideal financial and family starting point: “If you want to be this strong at this age, you need to be supported on a private basis. The family takes on most of the responsibility. The associations often do not have enough resources for this,” says Regazzi. Freestyle has become an elitist sport, even though it hurts to say so.

Great pressure on narrow shoulders

As extraordinary as her skills are on the board, the lively twelve-year-old is just as average on the snow. At the meeting in Saas-Fee she had almost as many questions for the journalist as the other way around. Why do church bells ring so often? Why are Europeans so tall? Are all Swiss villages this beautiful? The image of the Chinese top athlete quickly disappears and is replaced by that of a normal, curious girl.

If you ask her about her biggest dream, the answer isn’t Olympic gold. “I want to travel around the world on a snowboard and a surfboard and meet a lot of people,” says the child prodigy with a big grin on his face. “And maybe write a book full of jokes.” And the Olympics are no problem? Yes of course. “I want to be successful as an athlete so I can buy a house for my parents,” the twelve-year-old says calmly and seriously.

She knows the sacrifices her family makes so she can pursue her passion. This includes the fact that the parents sold their apartment and business in Beijing. Patti already makes money from sponsorship deals. But not enough to pay for the life and travel of a family of four. It will take another three years before she can participate in the World Cup. Even though the focus right now is on having fun, the pressure on Patti is already enormous.

Where is the limit?

Halfpipe coach Regazzi is also critical of this aspect. “The coming years will be crucial as to whether she has a long career ahead of her or burns out at 24.” Because Zhou is good, but still a child.

How hard can you push her now so she can stay at the front? How much freedom should you give her so that she doesn’t lose the fun? This tightrope walking is difficult. And probably the reason why Switzerland has never produced such talent, says Regazzi, despite the perfect infrastructure in this country: “Freestyle should be fun. We believe it is very important that there is a healthy balance between performance and enjoyment. Because not everyone has to be the best.”

Source : Blick