Biography
Brazil's Leticia Bufoni has been skateboarding since she was 10 years old, and now, on the verge of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 in 2021, is one of the world's best looking to make her mark on the Games.
Growing up in São Paulo, Bufoni saw her friends skating, and persuaded them to let her borrow a board to join in. She hasn't looked back since.
That's not to say the early days were easy. Far from it: her friends grew bored of the sport eventually, meaning she trained alone. Then, her father broke her first board in two with a power saw to stop her skating.
"My dad didn't like skateboarding at all when I started," Bufoni explained, "He thought it was just for guys and not girls."
He eventually came around, accompanying his daughter to the 2007 X Games when she was just 14. "After he came to my first contest, he fell in love with skateboarding," Bufoni says.
Having won her father over, Bufoni – whose success in the sport has seen her become a crossover name famous not only in skateboarding – then set about changing skateboarding for women.
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