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Skateboarding
From her dad breaking her first board to becoming the dominant female skater of her generation, Leticia Bufoni has had a wild ride so far. Find out about her past, present and future right here!
Every skateboarding generation has a superstar whose fame extends beyond the activity itself and forms a bridge to the wider public consciousness. For this generation, that person is Leticia Bufoni, one of the highest-profile skaters in the world.
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The biggest name in women’s skateboarding worldwide
Nobody did more to raise the profile of women’s skateboarding in the run-up to skateboarding’s debut at the 2020 Tokyo Games than Bufoni: Nike’s first female skate signing and a five-time X Games gold medallist.
Listed by Forbes magazine at the time as being one of the most powerful women in international sport, her success set her out along a new trajectory which was bigger than skateboarding itself and in so doing, set new benchmarks for what female skaters could achieve and expect. We now see that reflected in things such as prize money parity.
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An Inspirational female figure
Having earned every competitive accolade available, Bufoni’s presence in Tokyo was a celebration of a person who changed the perception of what women were capable of, both with and without a skateboard. She would also go on to be crowned Queen of the Red Bull Paris Conquest event later in 2021, further cementing her status as the most successful female skater of the modern era.
Bufoni has inspired many of the new stars of women’s skateboarding to begin skating in the first place: more than any medal, that will have been her crowning achievement in skateboarding. Much has changed within skateboarding during her career and much of that is down specifically to her.
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A Brazilian trailblazer
It was only 20 years ago that she was looking at her board broken in two by her father, who forbade her to continue her love affair with skating around the streets of São Paulo. Girls skateboarding was largely unheard of in Brazil even then, but aged 14, Bufoni would head to California to compete in her first international contest and ended up staying.
Enrolling herself in Hollywood High School, she set about setting the nascent women’s contest circuit alight. Nowadays, Brazilian female skateboarding is a dominant force in the international competitive circuit, as dozens of her countrywomen followed her example and forged professional skateboarding careers for themselves.
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See how Leticia's life may have turned out differently in Until 18
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New directions and new records!
Having forged that bridgehead for women to strive for success on their own terms within skateboarding and beyond, the second act of Bufoni’s professional skateboarding career has allowed her to explore projects she had previously dreamt of but put on ice due to contest commitments.
So far these have included entering the Guinness Book of World Records for the highest grind in history, and mentoring some of South Africa’s most promising skateboarding talent, in an upcoming feature which we are otherwise sworn to secrecy over!
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What Bufoni did next: check out Sky Grind!
The moment will come when I will have to stop, but I still have plenty of time!
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How Leticia Bufoni changed skateboarding forever
It was said of the cricketer W G Grace that he 'found cricket a country pastime and left it a national institution’; the same sentiment is true of Bufoni.
The first female skateboarding superstar, she has helped project the power of possibility over the heads of the skateboarding media and out into the wider world. Skateboarding as an activity is reaping many of those rewards in terms of participation, equality, representation and overall... niceness. Bufoni has ushered in a new era in skateboarding, one from which there is no going back!
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