Chloe Covell's Age: 16, and Bufoni's Record

March 13, 2026, Cosm Los Angeles. Steve Rodriguez has a call to make. He runs the New York franchise of the first pro skateboarding league on the planet, and he’s holding the No. 1 pick of the first draft in its history. He doesn’t think about it for long. The name he puts on the table belongs to a 16-year-old Australian who hasn’t even finished high school: Chloe Covell. Right behind her, at No. 8, a 31-year-old with 15 X Games gold medals just found out he’s nobody’s priority anymore.

⏱ Read: 5 min

That man is Nyjah Huston — the highest-paid rider on the circuit for a solid decade. Watching him slide behind a kid who’s barely been skating ten years says something. Not about Huston. About Covell.

Four months later, in New Orleans, that same kid ties the women's X Games medal record. And her own league's individual standings rank her… eighth. Both numbers are real, both came out of the same weekend. Here's why they don't contradict each other — and why the second one should worry her rivals more than the first.

2023: the youngest champion in X Games history

Covell was born February 8, 2010, in Tweed Heads, right on the Queensland–New South Wales border. Her dad, Luke Covell, played rugby league for the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks and the Wests Tigers. She got a skateboard for Christmas at six. She never put it down.

In November 2022, at 12, she took silver at the World Championships in Sharjah, UAE. Eight months later, in July 2023, she was standing on the top step at X Games California. She was 13. Nobody had ever won gold in women’s street that young in the history of the contest.

Paris 2024: an Olympic final at 14, two broken fingers

A year later she’s in Paris. Fourth into the Olympic women’s street final, carrying the medal hopes of an entire country. She’s 14 years and 170 days old.

The stands are packed, the Concorde is shaking, and Covell is skating on two fractured fingers. Every landing hurts. She holds her line anyway, throws her tricks, hunting the score that would put her on the podium. It never comes. She finishes eighth, tears in her eyes, in front of a crowd that cheers her anyway. No medal. But a lesson burned in: at this level, pain counts for nothing against the clock.

Three runs at the Takeover format. Three wins. Not one of them was close. — NOSK8, SLS DTLA report, April 2026

March 2026: pick #1, and Nyjah Huston bumped to No. 8

Back to Cosm Los Angeles. The MoonPay X Games League just picked 40 athletes out of 180 applicants, split across four franchises: New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, São Paulo. Skate and BMX mixed together, men and women on the same roster. A format no action sports league had tried before.

Rodriguez, founder of 5Boro Skateboards and an industry vet, isn’t playing it safe. He bets on a three-year deal with Covell — a guaranteed minimum of $30,000, travel covered, salary paid even if she gets hurt. At 19 she’ll be dead in the middle of her prime. Front-office basketball math, applied to street skating.

April 2026: nobody’s close

A month later, at DTLA, Covell stacks a third straight title in the Takeover format. She beats Spain’s Daniela Terol, who lands her first SLS podium, and American Paige Heyn. Three appearances, three wins — against a field that includes Rayssa Leal, the 19-year-old Brazilian who’s become the number one rival on the women’s circuit.

In June, in Rome, she adds the World Skateboarding Tour title to the pile. Two continents, two circuits, one name at the top.

July 2026: the Saturday night gold that flipped a title

Superdome, New Orleans, last final of Saturday night. XC Tokyo leads the club standings, New York is chasing. Covell drops an 87.00 on her second run. Her teammate Momiji Nishiya takes silver with 85.00. One hundred and eighty points at once, for the same club.

New York moves ahead and never drops back. On Sunday night, the first ever X Games League title comes down to ten points: 2,640 against 2,630. “We were so close to first place, and Momiji and I gave it everything,” Covell says in the X Games release. Steve Rodriguez got exactly what you take someone first overall for.

The full weekend — eleven finals, run-by-run scores — is in our New Orleans results report.

12 X Games medals at 16: Bufoni's record, matched

That gold wasn't only a team gold. It was her twelfth X Games medal. Twelve is the women's record in the event's history, held by Leticia Bufoni. Bufoni skated her first X Games in 2007, in Los Angeles. Covell wasn't born yet.

A whole career on one side. Three and a half years on the other. And since 2023, a consistency that has nothing to do with a hot streak: gold in California, gold in Chiba, gold in Osaka, street gold and best trick gold in Salt Lake City, gold in Chiba again, gold in New Orleans. When she shows up at an X Games contest, she gets on the podium.

Why her own league ranks her 8th — and why that's still scary

Here's the answer promised at the top. In the first XGL season's individual standings, Chloe Covell finishes eighth, with 400 points. Ahead of her, among others: Juni Kang, never drafted, fifth with 500 points, and Ginwoo Onodera, sixth with 470. Mia Kretzer, 11 years old, picked 39th out of 40, ends up the league's fourth highest scorer.

The XGL cumulative table adds up points from eleven finals, across three stops, in street, park, vert and their best tricks. A rider who ticks several boxes scores everywhere. Covell plays one field: street, plus its best trick — where she placed 4th in New Orleans. She scores less often. She scores when it's set up.

So the answer is blunt: a cumulative table measures a season, a title is decided on one night. Covell didn't win the individual standings. She decided the championship — 180 points in one final, for a title settled by ten. The standings say what she scored. The title says when she scored it.

That's exactly what worries the other GMs and the other competitors. Not the raw scores: the timing. Covell skates without forcing — no posture, no visible effort to prove she belongs, just fluid lines built from years of rolling for fun, long before contracts and drafts entered the equation. And that fluidity doesn't shake when the night counts double.

She's 16, has three years of guaranteed contract, and a league that just said out loud that age and pedigree no longer beat potential. At 19, when that deal expires, she'll only be entering her prime.

These days, when a 14-year-old pulls a trick in a session that a pro wouldn’t even try in a contest, odds are she grew up rewatching Covell clips on loop on her phone. Women’s skating isn’t asking for its spot anymore. It just took it.

To get exactly what makes her skating so far out, our breakdown of the 3 tricks that put her in a category of her own goes through her technique trick by trick. And if an NBA-style draft applied to skateboarding still sounds weird to you, our recap of the first XGL Draft tells how Nyjah Huston ended up at No. 8. The hour-by-hour report on her DTLA win fills in the rest.

Gear-wise, Covell rides an April deck, Nike SB shoes and Independent trucks. If you want to put together a setup in the same spirit without the pro budget, our guide to picking your first board breaks down sizes and prices.

Were you already on her before the XGL draft, or are you just hearing the name now? Drop it in the comments ↓

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