The boy is Nikon Jevtic. He's from Serbia and only 10 and supposed to be the miracle child of football. Nikon Jevtic has signed a contract with the Spanish team Valencia! This still very young football player is considered as one of the biggest talents of his age in the whole world. Valencia isn’t the first big team in Europe where Nikon plays for. Before his move to Valencia he already played for Arsenal, VfB Stuttgart and Austria Wien.
Another quality of Nikon is the 3 languages he already knows at this young age, and that without going to school. The Jevtic family moved to Great-Britain in 1987 because of the war in Yugoslavia and it was in those times that his older sister, Milly, taught him English.
When Alex Ferguson (Manchester Utd) saw a movie of Nikon Jevtic he was very impressed, Nikon could already cope with crosses of 70 metres and he could bang in one corner after another without hitting something else but the nets!
After a while his father had to move to Germany for his work and so did the Jevtic family. Nikon joined VfB Stuttgart where he learned the German language, and later on he moved to the youth academy of Austria Wien. He played many many great matches, and even against the German (under 18) national team he managed to score 6 goals! Of course it didn’t take to long before the big clubs where knocking on the door. It’s said that Valencia paid a large sum for him, but the exact amount isn’t clear.
Also media interaction isn’t a big deal for Nikon, he already practised on his signature and he has the nickname 'El Maestro'. He also has a personal trainer, his 22 years old brother Nestor (who’s an excellent football player himself) and a manager.
In February last, Akrit Jaswal, the miracle kid appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show. Akrit is a child prodigy who has been termed a genius right after his birth in 1993. When Oprah asked if he could understand Shakespeare at the mere age of four he answered, "I could understand it. That's why I was reading it".
Years ago, footage emerged from a remote village in India. The video shows a young girl receiving surgery to separate her fingers, which were badly burned and fused together. Why did this operation make headlines around the world? The surgery was performed by a 7-year-old boy named Akrit Jaswal; a teenager from Himachal Pradesh, India .
Now 13 years old, Akrit has an IQ of 146 and is considered the smartest person his age in Indi; a country of more than a billion people. This is an IQ level that beats even that of Albert Einstein. Before Akrit could even speak, his parents say they knew he was special.
"He learned very fast," says Raksha, Akrit's mother. "After learning the alphabet, we started to teach him joining of words, and he started writing as well. He was two." While in class II he cleared exams meant for class V. His mother realized he was special when he would answer graduate level questions.
At an age when most children are learning their ABCs, Akrit was reading Shakespeare and assembling a library of medical textbooks. When he was 5 years old, he enrolled in school. One year later, Akrit was teaching English and math classes.
Akrit developed a passion for science and anatomy at an early age. Doctors at local hospitals took notice and started allowing him to observe surgeries when he was 6 years old. Inspired by what he saw, Akrit read everything he could on the topic. When an impoverished family heard about his amazing abilities, they asked if he would operate on their daughter for free. Her surgery was a success.
After the surgery, Akrit was hailed as a medical genius in India. Neighbors and strangers flocked to him for advice and treatment. At age 11, Akrit was admitted to Punjab University. He's the youngest student ever to attend an Indian university. That same year, he was also invited to London's famed Imperial College to exchange ideas with scientists on the cutting edge of medical research.
Akrit says he has millions of medical ideas, but he's currently focused on developing a cure for cancer. "I've developed a concept called oral gene therapy on the basis of my research and my theories," he says. "I'm quite dedicated towards working on this mechanism."
Growing up, Akrit says he used to see cancer patients lying on the side of the road because they couldn't afford treatment or hospitals had no space for them. Now, he wants to use his intellect to ease their suffering. "[I've been] going to hospitals since the age of 6, so I have seen first hand people suffering from pain," he says. "I get very sad, and so that's the main motive of my passion about medicine, my passion about cancer."
Currently, Akrit is working toward a bachelor's degrees in zoology, botany and chemistry. Someday, he hopes to continue his studies at Harvard University.
However, Akrit’s progress came at a price: frustrated with the perceived lack of support for his gifted son, Akrit’s father became depressed and left the family home some time back, telling him not to get in touch until Akrit had found a cure for cancer. Adored by his self-sacrificing mother and treated as a genius, Akrit has no doubt he will do this. Akrit does not come from a rich family.
Budhia Singh (born 2002) is a five-year-old (as of 2007) Indian boy and the world's youngest marathon runner. Generally considered an athletic phenomenon, Budhia has participated in (and finished) races of up to 60 kilometers (37.3 miles) in roughly six hours and thirty minutes.
He runs seven hours at a stretch, sometimes as much as 48km (30 miles). On a daily basis.
When Budhia's father died some years ago, his mother, who washes dishes in Bhubaneswar, capital of the eastern Indian state of Orissa, was unable to provide for her four children.
She sold Budhia to a man for 800 rupees ($20).
But the young boy came to the attention of Biranchi Das, a judo coach and the secretary of the local judo association.
Mr Das said he noticed Budhia's talent when scolding him for being a bully.
"Once, after he had done some mischief, I asked him to keep running till I came back," Mr Das told the BBC.
"I got busy in some work. When I came back after five hours, I was stunned to find him still running."
Siesta
Mr Das, also the president of the residents' association of the run-down area where Budhia used to live, summoned the man who had bought Budhia and paid him his 800 rupees back.
Then started a strict diet and exercise regimen that saw Budhia adding a few kilometres to his daily marathon every few days.
In place of a few lumps of rice that he used to get at his mother's place, he now has a diet of eggs, milk, soybean and meat.
He starts running at 05.00 each day and does not stop till noon.
After a few stretching exercises, he has lunch and goes for a siesta.
At 16.00 it is time to run again.
Budhia is enjoying his stay at the judo hostel. "I can run and eat to my heart's content here," he says.
His speech is not yet easy to understand. Though he has yet to go to school, he has completed learning the alphabet of Oriya, the local language.
Budhia's coach has now set his eyes on a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.
That, he says, will be possible when he can run for 90km at a stretch.
"I have no doubt whatsoever that he will achieve it soon", Mr Das says.
Budhia enters his name in the Limca Book of Records
On May 1, 2006, Budhia Singh from Orissa completed a record breaking 65 kilometer (km) run from Jagannath temple, Puri to Bhubaneshwar. He was accompanied by his coach Biranchi Das and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) jawans. This feat was registered in the Limca Book of Records
Swimming across a stretch of open water in what we can only hope were highly supervised conditions is far-removed from that life-threatening Dickensian practice. However, when five-year-old boys (or rather their parents) speak of laying down the gauntlet to seven-year-old boys to see which is fastest and capable of a 6km sea swim, you have to wonder about the sanity of it all.
After successfully crossing the Mactan Channel, Justin Daniel Junio, a five-year-old from Manila, now wants to challenge the record set by Braxton Bilbrey, a seven-year-old American boy who became the youngest swimmer in May to cross a 2.25km stretch from Alcatraz Island to the shores of San Francisco, California.
Young Justin swam for almost two hours to cover the 6km crossing of the Mactan Channel last Sunday. Ma. Vilena, the boy's mother, told her local Inquirer that the family is now working on plans to travel to the United States to challenge Bilbrey.
Someone needs to finance their trip, accommodation and "Justin's training". Let us pray no fool with his money comes forward.
"If we go to the United States, my son has to be trained for the weather and water temperature. The weather and water temperature there are different and Justin needs a suit for that. We are afraid he may suffer from hypothermia if he does not train there," said Justin's mum.
There is no question that her son is being properly cared for: he showed no signs of fatigue from his effort, reports suggest, while October 15 brings an appointment with his "medical team at the Philippine General Hospital", to check that all is well.
His father, Florencio, is a retired Air Force colonel with the Philippine Air Force. The family took a tour of the mayoralities of the cities of Lapu-Lapu, Mandaue and Cebu as a way of saying thank you to the Cebuanos for their hospitality during Justin's big swim. The family are now planning to live in Cebu.
There is no impediment to encouraging children to swim across a 6km stretch of open sea. To turn that into a competitive pursuit for pre-school kids, however, could attract those who have far less regard for the welfare of their children than the Junio family does.
Meanwhile, young Justin should be having so much fun (beyond the glare of publicity) that by the time he's 15 it proves impossible to drag him away from the water form at least another 15 years, if not a lifetime.
Welcome to my blog. Even though I still do not have children, I intend to have at least five of them. When I go to friends of mine and have the possibility to play with small kids, I am the happiest man on Earth in those moments. In this blog I will show you a lot of kids talk, sing and act like grown-ups, while there agers still scratch the noses in the kindergarten. All your comments are welcomed!
