9 minute read
Letícia Bufoni
GOING GNARLY
Letícia Bufoni is the most famous female skateboarder in the world, and Ryan Sheckler is a fan of the Brazilian. This is her success story in 10 chapters
Words JEN SEE Photography STEVEN LIPPMAN
“I just want to be me – I don’t want to do what other people say,” says Letícia Bufoni
1. Getting started
When she was growing up in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo, Bufoni played in the streets with the boys from her local area. They spent their days playing soccer, skateboarding and riding bikes. “Everyone had a skateboard, and after two months I was begging my parents and my grandmother to buy me one,” she says. “That’s how everything got started.”
Bufoni was the only girl in the neighbourhood who liked to skate. Her father wanted her to play soccer with the other girls. “He didn’t want to see people calling me a tomboy or a lesbian anymore,” she says. Bufoni’s dad was so determined to stop her from skating that he cut her board in half. She cried for over a day. Then she scraped together parts from friends to put together a new board. “You know what? I love skateboarding, and I’m going to skate.”
2. Entering her first contest
Her first contest took place in Sao Paulo and included girls who were competing from all over Brazil. But her father didn’t want her to compete, so Bufoni almost didn’t get to go at all. A friend who had seen her skate and believed in her talent argued that she deserved a chance – he convinced Bufoni’s father to let her enter the competition. “He never really saw me skating before that contest,” Bufoni says of her father. “When he took me to that contest, he saw that I had potential.”
From then on, her father willingly took her to all the contests and events that he could. “He started taking me to the skatepark every day, and he became my biggest supporter.”
Nike sponsored that first competition in Sao Paulo. At the time, she didn’t imagine the brand would become one of her sponsors.
3. Moving to Los Angeles
At the age of 14, Bufoni relocated to Los Angeles. From her home country of Brazil, she viewed the Californian city as the centre of the skateboarding universe. “Everything happens in Los Angeles,” she explains. “You’re skating with the best pros and skating in the best skateparks.” Los Angeles
always featured in the skateboarding videos she obsessively watched and many of the sport’s most important and influential brands were based there. “LA was always the dream city,” she says.
The city’s pull intensified with Bufoni’s success. Her confidence in her talent grew, but when she looked around her home country, sponsorship opportunities seemed sparse. “I had no sponsors and it got to a moment where I was like, ‘Should I keep doing this or focus on school?’” Though her father continued to support her, Bufoni worried that her family’s financial resources would run out.
Bufoni’s ticket to LA came in 2007 with an invitation to compete at the X-Games. Her father travelled with her and paid their expenses. Once there, Bufoni knew she had to find a way to stay. Her eighth-place finish in the X-Games street event hinted at her future promise, but she still needed to
Bufoni moved to Los Angeles when she was 14 and mostly fended for herself after that
“I have a skater’s eye for everything,” says Bufoni, who skates in school playgrounds when no one’s looking
convince her dad, who was reluctant to allow his young daughter to move so far from home. After weeks of cajoling, he relented. “You’re right, you should stay,” she recalls him saying.
With her family back home in Brazil, Bufoni acclimatised to her new surroundings. At first the English language confounded her. “It was really hard to learn it coming from Portuguese,” she says. In what would become a familiar pattern, Bufoni persevered. She wanted to skate professionally and she believed she could make it in Los Angeles.
4. Breaking boundaries
As she began winning contests and seeking support from sponsors, she realised that skateboard brands simply didn’t sponsor women. She recalls a brand stringing her along for three years, and eventually walking away without offering her anything. Then it happened again with another brand. “At that point, I was like, ‘You know what? If these guys don’t want to support me, I’m going to make my own company,’” she says. Bufoni was all set to start her own skateboard company when Plan B offered her a sponsorship contract. The brand has sponsored some of the biggest names in men’s skateboarding and Bufoni is the first woman to ride for them.
Bufoni’s career stretches across something of a generational divide in women’s skateboarding. For teenage girls coming into the sport today, there are fewer barriers. “It’s changed a lot,” says Bufoni, who’s now 28. “I remember back in the day, I was one of the few women who was getting a pay cheque. Now every company has more women on the team.” Her pioneering career has helped forge a path that didn’t necessarily exist before she kickflipped her way into the spotlight.
5. Skateboarding is not a crime – usually
Street skating has a specific geography all its own. As she drives around LA, Bufoni is always looking for places to hone her craft. She says, “I have a skater’s eye for everything,” like metal handrails that are the perfect height and pitch for boardslides.
Any kind of school looks entirely different through the eyes of a skateboarder. “There’s no other place that you’re going to find school yards like you do in LA,” says Bufoni. “Every school here has perfect spots” – staircases to jump and picnic benches to tailslide. Designed as temporary classrooms, pale pink wooden bungalows are a feature at most schools in LA, and their access ramps make excellent launchpads for skaters’ tricks.
Many skateparks are often locked or located on private property. For pro street skaters, avoiding security is part of the job. “The other day we drove an hour to get to a spot, and the moment we got there, security came and kicked us out,” says Bufoni.
Sometimes she has to hit two or three spots before she can get her clips, which in LA can mean hours of driving. Typically security guards are mellow and just ask Bufoni and her crew to leave. “But sometimes they yell and get really mad,” she explains. Has she ever been arrested? “Thank God, no, but it could happen at any moment,” she says, laughing. 6. Rolling with the injuries
Bufoni has undergone four or five operations – she struggles to keep count. She’s broken five bones during the course of her career. At one competition in 2014, Bufoni fell on her final run as she was trying to jump from second into first place. While her family watched from Brazil, she suffered a concussion on live television. The risks don’t deter her, though. She does skydiving for fun because she enjoys the adrenaline rush that comes with fear, and she isn’t going to stop skateboarding any time soon.
“I’ve never had a moment that I was like, ‘I’m going to quit, I can’t do this anymore,’” she says. “I always love skating so much that every time I get hurt, I just think about getting back to it right away.”
Bufoni became a skater way before the sport achieved global popularity
Bufoni has won 11 X-Games medals representing Brazil
7. Becoming gnarly
To understand what makes Bufoni stand out, listen to skateboarding legend Ryan Sheckler: “Letícia is gnarly,” says the three-time X-Games gold medalist. “She’s really talented. I’m just a fan. If she wants to learn a trick, she’s going to learn that trick. She’s also got style – that’s the thing that’s really appealing about her skateboarding. She looks really good on a skateboard. It’s fun to watch her skate. If she continues to go for it, the sky’s the limit.” 8. Dealing with fame
Bufoni’s Instagram feed depicts a glamorous LA scene that looks a long way from the gritty reality of regular street skating. She skates through the a fancy hotel, with its luxurious décor as her stage. She takes part in photoshoots for her high-profile sponsors. And she goes to the beach to do some surfing before rolling out for a night on the town.
Bufoni manages her own social media accounts, and she says she posts a largely unfiltered stream of her day-to-day life. “I always wanted to do all my own social media, so people can see from my eyes and hear my own words,” she says. “I just want to be me – I don’t want to do what other people say.”
Just as she stubbornly resisted her parents’ efforts to end her love affair with skateboarding, Bufoni determinedly follows her own instincts as she creates her public profile.
She has 2.8 million followers on Instagram and her reach extends well beyond skateboarding. She’s no longer surprised when kids at the skatepark ask for a selfie. “People are there because they skate, so they know me,” she says. But she’s still not quite used to having people ask for a photo with her. “Somebody coming up to you in an airport, they have no idea what skateboarding is,” she says. Bufoni is accustomed to the attention her stardom commands but remains bewildered by it.
9. Explaining those tattoos
The tattoo along the length of her right hand reads: Trouble. She says it’s because she gets into trouble all the time. (A counterpoint: Her finger tattoos spell out Hope.) She also has tattoos of skulls, the number 13 (because she was born on April 13) and an aeroplane (because she’s constantly travelling). An eagle, carrying a skateboard in its talons, covers her upper arm. “My dad has the same eagle,” she explains. “He got the tattoo just before I moved to LA, and it says, ‘Good Luck, Letícia.’”
10. Forging ahead
With skateboarding stepping into the mainstream this year, Bufoni can’t escape a nagging sense that something’s being lost. “I feel like many kids now, they’re only thinking about being a professional skateboarder to make money and win – but when I started, it was like, ‘I skateboarded because skateboarding is awesome,’” she says, pointing out that she viewed it as a lifestyle rather than a sport. She wanted to be out in the streets, skateboarding all day, exploring with her friends, getting kicked out of school playgrounds and car parks. She looked at skating and saw a way of life and a culture that she wanted to join – and to spend her life chasing.
That isn’t to say that she doesn’t like competing. “Every time I compete, I compete to win,” Bufoni says. “A lot of people like competing and all, but they don’t really care – they just go to have fun.”
The chance to represent her country this year is beyond anything Bufoni has ever imagined. “Every athlete, they dream to be in this event,” she says. “I just want to win the first medal.”
