Skateboarding
From breaking barriers to shaping skateboarding’s future, Letícia Bufoni’s journey continues as she joins World Skate’s Executive Board. See how she got here – and what’s next.
Few indeed are the people of whom it can be said that they changed the landscape of their chosen activity as Letícia Bufoni has of women's skateboarding.
Every skateboarding generation has a superstar whose fame extends beyond the sport itself and forms a bridge to the wider public consciousness. Today, Letícia Bufoni is one of the highest-profile skaters in the world.
Now, as the newest member of World Skate’s Executive Board, she’s taking on a new role in shaping the sport’s future. But how did she get here?
01
Letícia Bufoni's road to the top
It was only 20 years ago that Bufoni was looking at the skateboard 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 at the age of 14, Bufoni headed to California to compete in her first international contest- and ended up staying.
She quickly became the dominant international force in women's skateboarding, winning 6 X Games gold medals, claiming Street League's first Women's Super Crown in 2015 and becoming Nike's first female skate signing. Her undeniable ability and unassailable ambition carved a path toward worldwide recognition as women's skateboarding mushroomed along the same trajectory as her career.
The 2020 Games saw skateboarding make its debut on the world's biggest sporting stage and among the biggest names taking part in Japan was Leticia, who fulfilled an incredible life story arc by representing Brazil in a competitive arena which she never could have imagine when kickflipping around the dangerous streets of Sao Paulo as a youngster.
Making history with her 9th place finish in Tokyo not only completed her sweep of competitive challenges within skateboarding, but began a new relationship with the Olympic movement and skateboarding's international governing body, World Skate.
02
Role model
Having earned every competitive accolade available, Bufoni's presence in Tokyo was a celebration of a person who's 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 take up the activity in the first place: more than any medal, that will have be crowning achievement in skateboarding.
Much has changed within skateboarding during her career. Women have become a driving force of the culture, earning equal contest prize money and running their own media and events – and much of that is down specifically to the bridgehead she formed.
Participation in women's skateboarding has become the one massive growth factor in the activity over the last decade, and many leaders of that new school cite Bufoni as their primary influence.
03
New horizons
Having completed a full sweep of the professional accolades available in skateboarding. It was time to have some fun and to explore new avenues within skating, which would allow Bufoni to give back to the grassroots community from which she began her journey of a lifetime.
However, in order to be able to put the foot to the floor after such a relentless competitive career, she had to settle into a fitness regime that would allow her to be able to pursue multiple skateboarding projects simultaneously.
04
How Letícia Bufoni stays on top
As someone whose stardom transcends her genre, Bufoni has a massive social media following. She uses the platforms she's created for herself to not just document her undoubtedly hectic life, but also the high-intensity workout routines to which she adheres in order to be able to skate anywhere in the world at any given time.
It may not be immediately obvious to a non-skater, but skateboarding is so challenging that the muscle memory and mental syncopation required to do it begins to fade noticeably after about 72 hours off the board.
Add into that the inevitable downtime of unavoidable injuries (and everyone who skates gets hurt) and you begin to understand that sharpness can no longer be taken for granted. It's a gruelling and demanding physical activity, have no doubt. Were it not, many more people would do it.
So, just when any other professional athlete could be forgiven for taking their foot off the gas, Bufoni doubled down on her fitness regimen in order for her to be able to take her skateboarding life along three different avenues all at once.
05
On the road again
Post-Tokyo, Bufoni was able to return to the bread-and-butter van life of professional skating by jumping into not one but three epic continental demo tours: the Red Bull Drop-In Tour Europe in 2022, Red Bull Drop-In Tour Australia in 2023 and the Red Bull Drop-In Tour South America in 2024.
At each demo she skated she proved to be a huge crowd draw, underscoring how her years pioneering women's skateboarding had enshrined her as a leading light within it.
06
Mentoring the new generation of female skaters
2023 saw Bufoni join forces with Argentina's Aldana Bertran to link up with the flourishing female skate scenes of South Africa. Their journey of holding a series of workshops, demos and group sessions alongside South African scene-builder Melissa Williams became a pivotal moment in the development of women's skateboarding from Johannesburg to Capetown.
07
What is Leticia Bufoni doing now?
2024 saw Bufoni's status as a skateboarding icon cemented by being invited to open the skateboarding medal contests at the Paris Games.
The moment, witnessed by a broadcast audience of millions worldwide at the beginning of the biggest skateboarding contests of all time, marked a new crescendo of international recognition for her achievements. So, it came as little surprise when early in 2025 she was appointed to the Executive Board of skateboarding's global governing body, World Skate, as Chair of their International Skateboarding Technical Commission.
It marks a mountaintop from which Bufoni can reflect on a skateboarding career that took her from the unforgiving streets of São Paulo to the highest echelons of her passion.
The moment will come when I'll have to stop, but I still have plenty of time.
08
How Leticia Bufoni changed skateboarding forever
As the first female skateboarding superstar, Leticia Bufoni 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.
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 that 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.
It can be said with confidence that Leticia Bufoni has ushered in a new era in skateboarding – one from which there is no going back!
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