Paris 2024 Olympics: Resilient Rayssa Leal rewards raucous Brazilian crowd with bronze in skateboarding
It was as if history itself was staring down Rayssa Leal.
The famed Luxor Obelisk, a 3,300-year-old imposing structure that has traversed centuries and witnessed epoch changes, loomed over the street skatepark. Its golden tip glinted in the Parisian sunshine that had finally deigned to greet these Games.
The weight of its majesty — a reminder of the historic setting hosting the first skateboard event — was not unlike the mountain of expectation on the shoulders of the 16-year-old from Imperatriz, an inland city of 250,000 people in northern Brazil, ahead of the women’s skateboarding event in Paris.
Since becoming Brazil’s youngest-ever Olympic medallist at age 13 in Tokyo, Leal had become her nation’s darling.
Beaming in her braces as she held the Olympic silver medal in her hand in Japan, her success became a shared piece of public consciousness. And when the teenager continued to follow through on her success at the Games with prestigious skate titles including a world crown, the public's love for only grew bigger and bolder until it had ballooned in time for Paris 2024.
Evidence of that euphoria was plain to see in the stands as a cacophony of Brazilians, clad in green and yellow, cheered her every move. Even before she stepped onto the course for her prelims, fans chanted her name.
Rayssa! Rayssa!
This was the moment an entire nation had waited for.
And Leal met the moment with a smile.
Brazil skateboarder Rayssa Leal played up to the crowd as she fought her way to a bronze medal at Paris 2024 on 28 July 2024.
Though the day’s events didn’t go quite as Leal likely would have planned, at no point did she ever give up.
Competing in heat three of the women’s prelims, the Brazilian showed immediate signs of struggle as she dropped in.
Whether it was the sheer volume of sound coming out of the wall of fans she was skating towards or simply the pressure of the moment, she never let on, but it nonetheless struck her hard.
Falling almost as soon as her first run started, Leal was left scrambling as she tried to salvage the time she had left. Her opening score — 59.88 — ended up the better of the two runs as she again stumbled throughout her second attempt. It left her with significant work to do in the trick section.
Determined, though, not to let the opportunity slip, Leal reached into her bag of tricks — one of the deepest on the women’s street contest scene — and began to pull out the stops.
Dancing as she waited her turn, her refusal to bow to the occasion only fuelled the enthusiasm of the fans watching.
Opening with an 85.87 score, she then produced an 88.87 second-trick attempt, which was heralded with a roar from the stands. When her third trick flashed a 92.68, you’d have been fooled into thinking she had won the event altogether.
It was clutch, and proved as such, as she hung on to a spot in the top eight for the final at the close of the final heat.
Leal greets fans after claiming her bronze medal at the Paris 2024 Olympics
Brazil's youngest-ever double Olympic medallist
Just as in the prelims, Leal once again faltered on both her runs — except this time she was not alone.
Only eventual winner Yoshizawa Coco successfully landed a first run, putting down an 85.02 effort. It would only be challenged by Liz Akama at the close of the section, producing an 89.26 on her second attempt.
The superior run scores left the two Japanese boarders out in front of the rest of the field, and there they stayed as they grappled for gold as the trick section unfolded.
For the rest of the field, bronze was the only real medal at stake. And Leal, beginning the trick portion with a 71.66 this time in the tank, found herself again with her back against the wall urged onwards by a carnivalesque chorus.
But whereas before she had winced at their might, this time when Leal needed it most, she drank in their energy.
Looking down at the park, poised to deliver her final trick, Leal closed her eyes, taking it all in one last time. And she delivered.
An 88.83 closing effort lifted Leal into third place and when the last challenger for the medal — 14-year-old Cui Chenxi of the People's Republic of China — fell, the rapture resumed.
Leal had done it. Brazil had done it.
She was now her country's youngest-ever double Olympic medallist and skateboarding’s first.
Relics of history may have been standing by, but on a sunny Sunday in Paris Leal was the one marking a moment few would ever forget.