Letícia
Bufoni
Brazil
·
Skateboarding
Date of birth | April 13, 1993 |
|---|---|
Birthplace | São Paulo |
Age | 32 |
Nationality | Brazil |
Career start | 2007 |
Disciplines | Skateboard Street |
São Paulo might be a hotbed of Brazilian skating today, but Letícia Bufoni was on her own when she began skateboarding there at age nine.
"When I touched a skateboard for the first time. I fell in love, and I never wanted to stop."
Despite facing early resistance to her love skateboarding from her dad, who didn’t approve until he saw her love and talent, she won the first contest she entered.
“In my neighbourhood, I was the only girl skating," she says. "Then I started to go to skateparks and I met some girls in Brazil that skated. Then after, maybe not even a year, I started competing in the contests. Everything happened super fast.”
At 14, she travelled to Los Angeles to compete in the 2007 X Games, however, after the contest, she never got on her flight home.
Realising that LA was the place to be if she wanted to become the best skater she could, Bufoni made the daunting decision to relocate to California alone.
She enrolled at Hollywood High School and set her sights on skateboarding glory, which she achieved just two years later, when she claimed first place in Street at the 2009 Maloof Money Cup.
Since then, every year just gets better and better for Bufoni. She won three X Games gold medals in 2013, turned pro in 2017 with Plan B Skateboards and won gold in Street at the X Games in 2018, 2019 and 2021. She holds the record as having the most medals won by a female in an X Games summer discipline with 12 medals.
Bufoni was the first woman signed to the Nike SB team, the first woman on the cover of The Skateboard Mag and she also starred in her own reality TV show in Brazil, becoming a spokesperson for female skaters around the world.
A proud moment for her came when she represented Brazil at the Games in Tokyo in 2021.
Outside skateboarding, Bufoni mentions skydiving as one of her passions. In 2022, she married the two activities with her Sky Grind project that saw her skateboard a grind rail on an aircraft that was 2,750m (9,000ft) up in the sky before leaving the aircraft to skydive back down to terra firma.
"I started skydiving in 2013. When I started jumping a lot, I started Googling the Red Bull Air Force Team. I never thought I’d meet all of them. When they told me about this opportunity I was like 'I need some of that.'”
Leaving her comfort zone and learning new things is very motivating for her. The top priority is to learn to fly a plane/helicopter but racing cars also interests her, and she's keen to compete in drifting contests.
"I feel like getting myself out of my comfort zone is part of my addiction. I really love doing that. I love learning new stuff. I even love being nervous and being able to learn something new, something awesome."
Bufoni feels like her life, sporting or otherwise, has been determined by having to prove to herself and a lot of other people that if you dream it, you can do it.
"I came pretty much from the ghetto with no money, then I moved to the US and then I turned professional. Then I made a living off skateboarding, and I got to pretty much change the face of women’s skateboarding."
Where does she see women’s skateboarding in 10 years? “Just over the past two years it's changed so much," she says. "There are more and more girls coming up now – young girls ripping. I think it'll change everything.”
Cementing her status as a skateboarding icon, Leticia was chosen for the ceremonial opening of skateboarding at the Paris Games last summer before being announced as a new member of skateboarding's governing body World Skate's Executive Board in early 2025!