China’s 7’3 Zhang Ziyu is world’s tallest girl, and she’s dominating the basketball court

Photo by Fred Lee/Getty Images

Women’s sports have never seen a player like this.

The future of sports is always on display in international contests. From world soccer showing off the newest young stars like Spain’s Lamine Yamal to FIBA summer basketball tournaments to the upcoming Olympics, discovering future stars is a thrilling part of sports fandom.

The next big international prospect might be hitting your television soon after her breakout performance at the FIBA U18 women’s Asia Cup. Chinese center Zhang Ziyu, who stands 7’3, is impressing during the tournament. It’s still simply unfathomable that there are people that tall walking among us.

Ziyu had 36 points, 13 rebounds, and four blocks in a win over New Zealand in the tournament on Tuesday. These highlights are comical: she’s so much bigger and stronger than everyone else on the court, and has pretty good touch as an interior scorer, too.

Ziyu had 19 points in the tournament opener. She’s only getting better.

Ziyu appears to be the tallest woman in the world. She’s officially listed by the tournament at 7’3, or 220 centimeters. A woman in Turkey listed at 215 centimeters was known as the tallest woman in the world as recently as last year.

Not only is she like a whole two feet taller than the Indonesian team trying to defend her, but she actually shows pretty good footwork in the post for a 17-year-old. What’s crazy is that she doesn’t even have to jump to put the ball in the hoop, that’s just wild.

It’s going to fascinating to follow Ziyu throughout this tournament. Women’s sports has legitimately never seen anything like this.

Whatever she does in the future, I hope she does really well at, because the sky is the limit for her as a basketball player. Or, she can just reach every top shelf on Earth.