Scout’s Overview
📡 🚨 Weekly Sports Radar: Skateboarding

Skateboarding is a dynamic, freestyle sport where athletes perform tricks using a flat, four-wheeled board. Born from California’s surf culture in the 1950s, it began as a sidewalk pastime but evolved through the 1980s and 90s into a global sport and hobby.

Now an Olympic sport since 2020, skateboarding competitions are judged on difficulty, execution, style, consistency, and creative use of the course. Athletes get multiple runs, with their best score counting. Uniquely, skateboarding is one of the few elite sports where teenagers often dominate, with Olympic medalists like 17-year-old Momiji Nishiya and 16-year-old Sky Brown leading the sport.

🏋 Athlete of the week: Luke Littler

Luke Littler, the 19-year-old English darts sensation, has been featured in our newsletter for hitting impossible combinations and dominating at the top stage.

This week, he hit a 9-darter AGAIN, in an insane semi-final which saw both players not miss a single dart for the first time in PDC history. He followed that up by winning the World Matchplay, completing darts’ legendary Triple Crown.

🏟️ Venue of the week: Rafa Nadal Academy

The Rafa Nadal Academy is a world-class tennis and education centre founded by Tennis legend Rafael Nadal to train young athletes in sport. The academy has 45 tennis courts, 16 padel courts, pickleball, 7-a-side football, beach volleyball, squash, pools, and other state-of-the-art facilities. I personally would NOT mind.

Fun Fact: Carlos Alcaraz, one of the world’s best, trained and competed here.

🧤 Fit Check: Little League Caribbean 2023

Little League Baseball is a global youth organisation for kids aged 4 to 16. Unlike many youth teams that wear replicas of their senior counterparts, Little League teams have their own custom uniforms.

The Caribbean team’s uniform features a sky blue that pops beautifully, but it's the sleeve design that really makes the jersey. And let's be honest, the way he's rocking it with that cold stance just takes it to another level.

From the bench
🗞️ Young Athletes Edition:

To be honest, any of the following could have been our athletes of the week this edition:

• Our favourite swimmer, Summer McIntosh, won gold at the World Aquatics Championships, beating her main competition: a 28-year-old, nine-time Olympian. As a reminder, Summer is just 18, and already has 3 Olympic golds.

• Puerto Rico's Xander Zayas became the youngest active world champion in boxing, aged 22.

• At just 12 years old, China’s Yu Zidi was so fast that they let him break the minimum age requirement of 14 for the world aquatics championships. At just 12, he was only 0.06 seconds off a podium finish. Insane.

• 19-year-old Divya Deshmukh just won the Women’s Chess World Cup. This victory not only qualifies her to challenge for the Women’s World Championship but also earns her the Grandmaster title.

📊 Analyst’s Corner

• The global market for youth sports was estimated at 37.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2022 and was forecast to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 9.2 percent until 2030.
  

🏆 Sports Calendar

Here’s a look at the ongoing and upcoming sports events this week: