Skateboarding
Skateboarding
Meet the female skateboarders changing the game
From pioneers to pacesetters, allow us to introduce you to a host of the most iconic women in the world of skateboarding today.
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After years of male domination, the explosion in women's skateboarding in the last decade has helped project the power of possibility over the heads of the skateboarding media and out into the wider world. Today, skateboarding is reaping many of those rewards in terms of participation, equality and representation.
The global women's scene has introduced an exciting new era in skateboarding, and one from which there is no going back. Meet some of the figureheads and breakout stars of skateboarding's new wave!
01
Mariah Duran
Mariah Duran performs an ollie
© Jeremiah Arias
One of the most established names in female skateboarding internationally, Duran is a style icon and a pioneer of the crisp flick technique which allows her to flip her board higher than many of her peers can ollie. With that power comes the challenge of control, however, as taming a board which has left your feet is much harder than controlling one to which you are still in contact, and so landings become a more treacherous proposition.
Exuding charisma, Duran garners fans both old and new as her stratospheric career in the wider world of skateboarding continues to develop, and leverages that cultural currency by backing campaigns to keep girls engaged with sport into young adulthood and beyond. A radical figure in every sense.
02
Yndiara Asp
Yndi Asp – stalefish
© Marcelo Maragni
Brazil’s concrete transition queen Yndi Asp is part of the bionic backyard skate scene in Florianopolis, Brazil. Spotted by one of skateboarding’s longest-established brands Santa Cruz back in 2013, she quickly became one of the most recognisable faces on the women’s contest circuit. Memorably, she won Red Bull Bowl Rippers at the legendary Bowl Du Prado in Marseille in 2017 and 2018 respectively.
With a courage bordering on fearlessness, she skates noticeably faster than almost anyone else and has taken some awful slams as a result. Asp brings an air of excitement to skateboarding which it both needs and deserves.
03
Margielyn Didal
Margie Didal – Melanchollie
© James Griffiths/Red Bull Content Pool
Margielyn Didal’s story is an incredible one. From starting out skating around the streets of Cebu city in the Philippines at the age of 12, she’s enjoyed a stratospheric rise; and, in so doing, she’s raised the profile of skate culture not just in her home country but the entire region. Contest victories at the Asian and Southeast Asian games in 2018 and 2019, respectively, turned Didal into something of a national hero, even as Cebu’s only skatepark (Concave) was closing down.
Forced to practise at the picturesque but limited terrain underneath the Pahara bridge in neighbouring Mandaue, Didal organised a small and private training facility where she could dial in her technique with a view to setting the world of women’s skateboarding alight. A vital part of our own ‘Greetings From The UK’ mini-series and Skate The Museum, she has established herself as one of skateboarding’s most charismatic faces right now.
04
Lizzie Armanto
Lizzie Armanto – Frontside Invert
© Birdhouse Skateboards
Lizzie Armanto is one of the biggest names in skateboarding today. The only woman to have completed a fullpipe loop and battling back after a slam that would have retired 99 percent of skateboarders for life, she brought charisma and roots manoeuvres to a format where others played things a little more conservatively. For that reason alone she is one to watch, even more so because she is in the unique position to design her own Olympic outfit courtesy of her shoe sponsor, Vans.
Armanto is a giant of women’s skateboarding and is widely respected for her tenacity in making it back to elite competition level from potentially career-ending injuries.
05
Vitoria Mendonça
20 min
Vitória Mendonça
Inspirational Brazilian Vitória Mendonça is changing the face of pro skateboarding culture.
It's no great stretch to say that Vitoria Mendonça is the modern face of skateboarding today. Having just turned professional by her board sponsor Element Skateboards at CPH Open 2023, she has the world at her feet. But it wasn’t always this way.
From a humble background in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, her skating ability has raised her up to become one of the most visible girls in the worldwide sponsorship game today. Moreover, she has also parlayed her talent into a successful parallel career as a model. Nobody writes scripts for life stories like hers in a world where young black women can face all kinds of prejudice. From the tough streets of urban Brazil to being nominated as Thrasher’s Skater Of The Year 2022, Mendonça is living proof that skateboarding is a dream factory.
06
Lore Bruggeman
Lore Bruggeman showcases her skills
© Lore Bruggeman
Equally as comfortable skating street, skateparks or transitions around the vibrant and dynamic Belgian skate scene she calls home, Lore Bruggeman is helping usher in a new era in the European scene. In 2018, she secured second place at Prague’s Mystic Cup and third place at the European Skateboard Championships in Basel. A year later and that trophy haul would include winning the Belgian Skateboard Championships, third place at the World Skate OI STU Open in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil and second place at the European Street Championships in Switzerland.
Having first started skating aged 12, a final position of 11th in Tokyo 2021 represented a solid improvement on her 15th place at the World Championships in Rome earlier that summer and bodes well for her in eyeing up a place at Paris 2024.
07
Nora Vasconcellos
Nora Vasconcellos – Backside Air
© Sam McGuire
One of the figureheads of the female explosion which changed skateboarding permanently for the better a generation ago, Vasconcellos has that silo-straddling ability which makes her bigger than skateboarding itself. A modern-day counter-cultural icon in her own right, she is one of her footwear sponsor’s biggest stars and has become something of a big sister figure to the entire skateboarding world.
Moving from Massachusetts to California in 2012 to work for Welcome Skateboards, her skateboarding ability and idiosyncratic charm made her a fast-rising name in the evolving skateboarding landscape of the time, to the point where she is now creating her own clothing lines for major sportswear brands. A self-made star of the skateboarding world who has gone on to project the possibilities of skateboarding onto the world. Skateboarding is all the richer for having her in it.
08
Sakura Yosozumi
Sakura Yosozumi at play in her new vert park
© Kazuki Mita/Red Bull Content Pool
The 2019 Vans Park Series World Champion caught the world’s attention as an unknown through sheer will and determination. A relatively late starter through her brother’s encouragement at age 11, Sakura Yosozumi has now become a dominating presence in all facets of transition skating, including the almost-monastic discipline of vertical halfpipe skating which teaches a different set of skills again to the bowled out park terrain which constitutes Skateboard Park. One of the few women in the world with confident 540’s on lock and a deserved Tokyo gold medallist, Yosozumi is the new global pacesetter in her discipline.
09
Aldana Bertran
Aldana Bertran - Backside Disaster
© Sam Clark/Red Bull Content Pool
Argentina’s Aldana Bertran is a product of Latin America’s second-biggest skate scene. One of the biggest concentrations of skateboarding talent there is Mar Del Plata, the surfing town from where Thrasher Skater Of The Year Milton Martinez hails. Bertran was born there and first picked up a board aged 13 and has been surrounded by the culture ever since.
Having become an established name on the streets of Buenos Aires to which most sponsored skaters in Argentina eventually gravitate, Bertran was named Outstanding Skater of the Year at Girls Invasion 2019 before taking a commendable third place at Red Bull Lisbon Conquest in 2022. She was then hand-picked to become one of only four people to skate inside London’s Natural History Museum for a project in association with Canon cameras in 2023.
10
Letícia Bufoni
Leticia Bufoni - Back Smith
© Anthony Acosta
What more can be said about the most successful female skateboarder of all time? Leticia Bufoni is one of the highest-profile skaters in the world today, of that there is no question. Nobody did more to raise the profile of women’s skateboarding in the run-up to skateboarding’s debut in the postponed 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 sports, 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 like prize money parity. In just the last two years alone, Bufoni has appeared at both Red Bull Paris Conquest and Red Bull Rio Conquest, headed up the never-to-be-repeated Skate The Museum project in London and set records with spectacular skateboarding skydives.
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