The world of sport consistently showcases the very best in athletic and technical brilliance, and one facet of that is that people of all ages can dazzle at their particular craft.
While professional sport is notoriously difficult to excel in, some have broken the glass ceiling very early in their lives, becoming world-famous figures while still in their teenage years.
The most recent example of this is footballer Lamine Yamal, who despite still only being 17, has become a global sensation, playing a starring role in Barcelona‘s dominance in Spanish football this season, after also being a vital cog in the Spain team that won Euro 2024 last year.
Yamal should certainly be in conversations about being one of the world’s greatest ever teenage sports stars, but we at Sports Mole have put together a list of 10 remarkable athletes who, for now, can lay claim to have more prestige and achieved slightly more in their early years.
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While there are certainly parallels to be drawn with the careers of Yamal and Mbappe, the French striker secured legendary status in his country as a teenager, and he has only gone on to improve further.
Mbappe won the title with Monaco at 17, and the same season in the Champions League he scored in both legs against Manchester City, three times in their quarter-final tie with Borussia Dortmund, and in the semi-final with Juventus, leading to Paris Saint-Germain to spend €180m (£150m) to sign him at that tender age, such was his talent.
While he won the double in his first season at PSG, the 2018 World Cup was Mbappe’s crowning moment, scoring twice in the last 16 against Argentina and in the final against Croatia, becoming only the second teenager after Pele to achieve either of those feats, while also becoming the youngest starter to win the competition since the Brazilian great.
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Not just famed for his ability on the court, tennis legend Borg revolutionised the sport in the late-1970s, becoming the face of tennis, and a celebrity in his own right.
The Swede won the French Open twice as a teenager, and would dominate during the era of tennis royalty including the likes of John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Ilie Nastase, Vitas Gerulaitis and Arthur Ashe, among others, winning the first of five straight Wimbledon singles titles just two weeks after his 20th birthday.
Borg paved the way for more young superstars to break out too, as Mats Wilander, who won the French Open and the Australian Open twice as a teen, and Boris Becker, who was successful twice at Wimbledon before the age of 20, both broke onto the scene following the success of the Swede.
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Similar to the impact of Borg in tennis, Littler has taken darts to a completely new stratosphere since breaking onto the scene at the 2024 World Championship, with viewing figure records being smashed since his introduction.
While he still has some way to go to replicate the careers of some on this list, very few can claim they have had quite the same impact on a particular sport than Littler has done to darts, which has exploded both in Europe and worldwide since his run to the final of World Championship over a year ago.
Since then, Littler has been utterly dominant, becoming the youngest ever World Champion a year after falling short in the final, already ranking ninth in the all-time major honours list on the PDC, winning the Premier League of Darts in 2024, as well as becoming the youngest player ever to hit a televised nine-dart finish, and comparisons are already being made between him Phil Taylor, who remains the greatest ever to do it.
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One of the most famous names in Olympic history is that of the Romanian gymnast, who in 1976 stunned the world by becoming the first athlete in history to be awarded a perfect 10 for a routine at the Games.
Comaneci was just 14 when she executed that perfect uneven bars routine, also going on to win the all-around gold medal, something so extraordinary that it is not even possible anymore, as no gymnast under the age of 16 is allowed to compete for it.
As a teenager, Comaneci won five Olympic gold medals, and nine medals overall, and remains famed for being arguably the most iconic and elegant gymnast in the sport’s long history.
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Women’s tennis has been blessed with many teenage superstars who have taken the sport by storm, and one of those was Hingis in the mid-1990s.
Despite facing the likes of Steffi Graf, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario and Monica Seles, Hingis reached all four Grand Slam finals in 1997 as a 16-year-old, winning three of them, and the Swiss would go on to win two more Australian Open crowns as a teenager, and she won a combined seven Doubles titles in her tender years.
Hingis was always destined for the top, winning the French Open Girls title at just 12 years of age, and both the French and Wimbledon at 13, before winning the Women’s Doubles at SW19 as a 15-year-old, but sadly, a string of injury setbacks meant she never won any more Grand Slam titles after her teenage years.
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Swimming is a sport notorious for young athletes rising to the top, but none on the women’s side have ever enjoyed such dominance as Ledecky, as the American broke out at London 2012 as a 15-year-old, winning gold in 800m freestyle.
Four years later, Ledecky improved exponentially in time for Rio 2016, winning an unprecedented solo trio in the 200m, 400m and 800m freestyles, while also taking gold in the USA’s 4x200m freestyle relay team, making her the most decorated female Olympian at those Games, and she was potentially robbed of another, as her specialist event, the 1500m freestyle, was not introduced at the Olympics until Tokyo 2020.
It was not just the success, but the manner of it that was so impressive with Ledecky, as she also set a combined 13 World Records across three different disciplines (400m, 800m, 1500m freestyle) in her teens, making her possibly the greatest female teenage Olympian of all time.
4: Monica Seles (Tennis)
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Seles is the second women’s tennis player to make it onto this list, and there was no way she could not be a part of it, given the astonishing success she enjoyed as a teenager, winning a staggering eight Grand Slam titles before the age of 20.
The Yugoslav-born American remains the youngest-ever winner of the French Open at 16, one of the three she won at Roland-Garros as a teen, as well as three in Australia and two at Flushing Meadows in the US Open, while also being the Tour Finals winner on three occasions.
However, the despicable on-court attack that saw her stabbed in the back at age 19 derailed her career entirely, and led to a two-year break from the sport, and even though she returned and won the Australian Open in 1996, Seles was never quite the same player, as the psychological torment of the incident saw her call time on her career far too soon.
3: Steffi Graf (Tennis)
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The last of the three legendary teenage tennis stars that have graced the women’s game is Graf, who achieved feats in her teens that will more than likely never be matched by any player of either gender ever again, regardless of age.
No player in tennis history, male or female, has ever completed the ‘Golden Slam’ apart from Graf, who did so in 1988 when she was 18 turning 19, winning all four Grand Slams as well as an Olympic gold medal in Seoul, while also taking the Women’s Doubles at Wimbledon as an added bonus, in a year of sheer excellence that will surely never be seen again.
Graf became the world number one just after her 18th birthday, and held it for 377 weeks, and while she won another two Grand Slams in her teens, the German was dominant throughout her career, as she remains the only player ever to win all four Grand Slams on four different occasions.
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Phelps’s achievements are so great, that many forget that a large bulk of his success came while he was a teenager, competing at the Athens Olympics in 2004 as a 19-year-old, where he tied the record for the most medals ever won by a single athlete at one Games – eight (six gold, two bronze).
The Baltimore Bullet dominated the butterfly and medley events throughout his career, and he won his first World title at 16 in 2001, and took another four in 2003 as an 18-year-old, breaking 14 World Records in his teens across 4 separate individual events.
Phelps is now well known for being the most decorated Olympian of all time with a tally that will most probably never be beaten, with 28 overall medals, 23 of which were gold, and 13 in individual events.
1: Pele (Football)
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After some deliberation, there can only be one athlete to top this list, and it is footballing icon Pele, who remains arguably the most famous sportsman ever to live, and his crowning moments and stairway to stardom came during his teenage years.
Pele was a regular for Brazil by the age of 16, and at the 1958 World Cup, aged 17, he set a number of records that have still never been broken, including being the youngest player ever to win the competition, the youngest to play in a final, the youngest to score in a final, and the youngest to score a hat trick at a World Cup, as he did in the semi-final versus France.
In the final against Sweden, the first of Pele’s two goals remains one of the all-time World Cup moments and will live on forever, and the famous number 10 he wore for the Selecao at that tournament has become one of the most iconic sporting artefacts of all time.
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