Arisa Trew

Gold Coast park skater Arisa Trew was catapulted into the spotlight in June 2023 when she pulled off what has been described as the holy grail of her sport, becoming the first female athlete to land a 720 in a competition setting. That means going up the ramp backwards, spinning two 360s in the air and coming back down forward on your board.

Arisa, ranked 14th in the world, landed the two mid-air rotations at the Tony Hawk Vert Alert in Salt Lake City, USA.

“All the pros were coming over and congratulating me and hugging me and cheering me on,” Arisa said. “It was crazy and the crowd was so loud.”

Arisa started skating as an eight-year-old, but only because the water was too cold to surf.

“I started because I used to surf a lot and one year it got too cold in the water so we basically just went to land and I started skateboarding,” she said.

“I could always skate just on the flat ground and my dad … me and him would double on the long board on the esplanade. But then we went to a skate park and I started to skate on the actual ramps.”

Initially skating was just something Arisa did for fun.

“I didn’t take lessons, I would just go up to the skate park after school,” she said. “There weren’t any other girl skaters, either.”

But when a new girl in town turned up at the skate park, Arisa had a friend and someone who encouraged her to work on her tricks.

“We became really good friends and she pushed me and that’s when I started getting really good,” Arisa said.

Her career went to another level when her parents, encouraged by her coach Trevor Ward, agreed to let her complete high school through the Gold Coast-based Level Up Australia Academy, which combines elite coaching with home schooling.

“I love skating with my friends because we can all hang out and learn tricks together, especially landing tricks and learning them,” Arisa said. “It’s the best feeling ever when you can land it.”

Shortly after pulling off the 720 in front of Hawk, Arisa landed it again as she took home the gold medal in the vert competition at the X Games in Ventura, California.

Arisa became among a group of young Australian female skaters who were making it to the podium at international skating events with regularity.

She nailed down her place at the Olympics by winning back-to-back gold medals at Olympic qualification series events in Shanghai and Budapest in 2024.

The day Arisa turned 14 years and 86 days old is when she became a park skateboarding Olympic champion in Paris, Australia's youngest ever Olympic gold medallist.

Needing to top Japanese skater Cocona Hiraki’s score of 92.63 in the final for victory, Arisa delivered an extraordinary run to land a score of 93.18 for the gold. It meant Sandra Morgan's record of being the youngest Australian Olympic champion (14 years and 184 days) from the swimming at the Melbourne 1956 Games was broken.

After the Games at the 2024 Australian Institute of Sport Performance Awards, Arisa won the emerging athlete of the year.

When she’s at home Arisa still likes to go surfing “two or three times a week and at weekends”.

Arisa and fellow Australian skating prodigy Ruby Trew are not related, but the pair are good friends and enjoy making jokes about their shared family name. “We just tell people we’re cousins, even though we’re not,” Arisa said.