Rayssa Leal now three‑time street skateboarding world champion
Accustomed to incredible feats under pressure, 16-year-old Rayssa Leal made history yet again on Sunday (Dec. 15) by becoming the first athlete to win the Street League Skateboarding world championship title three times in a row.
Falling behind on the scoreboard when she missed the first two runs in the Super Crown (the final competition that defines the season’s champion), the star took the Ibirapuera Gymnasium in São Paulo by storm by scoring a 9.1 on her fifth and final chance, winning in a landslide.
The Brazilian lifted the trophy and the prize of $100 thousand dollars after scoring 35.4 points. The Olympic champion in Paris, Japan’s Coco Yoshizawa (34.2) was second, and her fellow countrywoman Yuemeda Oda (33.7) came third on the podium.
“Everything that happened today is worth more than this trophy. I missed the first two attempts. I was nervous; I’m not going to lie. My family was with me through it all. This trophy goes to the people at home. You’ve seen the reality of skateboarding, the friendship, the family ties—and you’re going to see it all grow. The level was really high, with several nines across the scoreboard,” she said emotionally in an interview shortly after her victory.
The Brazilian got off to a good start in the Super Crown. In the first two 45-second runs, she drew applause from the 8 thousand fans at the Ibirapuera with scores of 8.2 and 8.5. However, in the sum total for the two performances, Rayssa finished behind Australian revelation Chloe Covell, just 14 years old. The next phase included five runs, with only the three best scores being taken into account. That’s when the scare came! Rayssa fell in the first two rounds and scored zero. The Brazilian saw the lead alternating between Australian Chloe and the Asian quartet (Momiji Nishiya, Yumeka Oda, Coco Yoshizawa, and Liz Akama).
With no room for further missteps, Rayssa went for all or nothing and pulled out excellent scores in her last three performances to keep Brazil’s global dominance in women’s street skateboarding. The decisive scores were 9.1, 8.7, and 9.1.
“It’s been a really outstanding year; I learned a lot, both physically and mentally. It’s also been a tough year, but we’ve overcome the difficulties and everything worked out well. It’s all or nothing. That’s what the last run was all about—I needed a nine. That and a few [other maneuvers] could have given me a nine, but that was the one I’m most confident about. Felipe drew a sensational strategy; he knows all my strengths,” she said, referring to her coach Felipe Gustavo, a friend of Rayssa’s who started coaching her this year.
