Leticia Bufoni is one of the greatest skaters ever. Now she’s tearing up asphalt.

This story is originally published in Huck 83: Life Is a Journey – The 20^th Anniversary Issue. Order your copy now.

In 1995, fuelled by toxicity and misogyny in the skate scene, DIY rebellion and refusal to submit, women skaters flooded Thrasher Magazine with letters of complaint. The magazine paid attention and their February issue opened with an anonymous letter from Poison Ivy of ​“Pussyville”, Connecticut, who wrote: ​“Chauvinist pigs, you called?! Yes, I am a girl skater. If you don’t like it, tough shit! Go skate somewhere else. I like smashing stereotypes and male egos… To all the guys – sure I’ll skate with you, but ​‘Ladies first!’ There are a lot of girl skaters out there, in the shadows of the guys, practising and waiting to come out… If you don’t like to watch me skate, close your eyes and leave…”

This letter preceded a seminal six-page feature in the same issue, entitled Girls Who Skate, publishing letters and photos that captured a scene on the brink of change. 

Meanwhile, in São Paulo, Brazil, Leticia Bufoni was born that same year.

Now 32, Bufoni is a six-time X Games gold medalist, three-time Guinness World Record holder, the first female skateboarder signed by Nike SB, and a self-professed adrenaline junkie. Last summer, she drove hell-for-leather during her sophomore motorsport season, placing in the top five of Porsche Cup Brasil.

When we speak, she’s at home in São Paulo, fresh off the beach – black bikini, white cap, and adorned with tattoos, including the word ​“trouble” on her right hand. Sun-kissed and radiating on Zoom, she’s eager to talk about shredding stereotypes, empowering the next generation, and the lessons that defined her journey.

“If you really want to do something good, you’ve got to learn how to fall and get back up and keep trying. In skating, you learn how to miss tricks before you learn how to land them. Unlike most things in life where you try not to fail – in skateboarding, failing is the first step to learning,” she winks.

• Read next: Huck’s 20^th Anniversary Issue, Wu-Tang Clan is here

“I grew up in the street playing sports all the time. I started skating because I used to play soccer, but when all my friends switched to skateboarding, I had no one left to play with. I was the only girl among 10 boys. I grabbed a friend’s board, just for fun, but I started learning really fast – faster than all of them”

Bufoni mastered her first ollie aged nine, on her first day of skateboarding. Later that week, she learned how to do a boardslide on a wooden rail and began honing her confidence on ramps on her neighbour’s block. Within two months, she could kickflip and heelflip. 

“My dad didn’t get it. He hated it because I was the only girl, and he didn’t like to see me fighting with the boys who called me a tomboy or coming home with scrapes and bruises. He tried to convince me to stop skating. He didn’t see a future in it. He said skating wasn’t for girls, that it was for bums, and told me to focus on school.”

But Bufoni skated harder. Until one day, her dad – enraged at her disobedience – grabbed her board, took it to his tool cabinet, and cut it in half with a circular saw right in front of her.

“I cried for a day. He told me I was never gonna skate again,” she reveals. ​“But by the next afternoon, I’d scraped together parts from friends, set up a new board, and was back skating.”

Her dad surrendered. A fellow parent visited their house not long after and persuaded him to witness his daughter’s skills firsthand.

“I was 11, that was my first competition – and I won. My dad took me, he met all the other parents that day, saw all the other girls, and he fell in love with skateboarding. Since that day, he became my number one fan, and every competition became a family hobby,” she beams proudly.

• Read next: Wu-Tang Clan forever, and ever

Her dad drove her to the skatepark every day, her sisters and mother cheered her on weekend after weekend, and even her grandma got in on the action.

“Brazilian skaters are so passionate about it because we have to be. Everything in Brazil is hard – there are obstacles around every corner. Everything is expensive. If you want to buy a board or shoes, you have to work super hard. You have to work relentlessly to be known. You have to earn it. Because of that, we appreciate and value every part so much,” Leticia says.

“My grandma bought my first pair of skate shoes on layaway. She set them up in three payments, but by the time the second payment came around, I’d already worn them out. They were completely torn!”

And it wasn’t just her shoes. ​“I hurt my shins so much, so my dad encouraged me to wear shin guards,” she laughs. ​“He was saying, ​‘You’re a woman. You’ll want to wear a dress. You don’t want to have shins like that.’ So I gave it a try. I thought ​“fuck it”. I wore shin guards for three or four years, and I don’t regret it. They were under my pants so no one could see them.” She continues, ​“It’s funny to think about it now. I wasn’t wearing elbow pads, knee pads, none of that. But shin guards? I was wearing those!”

Bufoni continued to carve her own path, in skating and beyond. Her love for speed and cars led her to start racing go-karts at 13, while she gained traction in skateboarding from 11 – 14 by winning nearly all the competitions she entered, was crowned World Champion, locked down a Brazilian sponsor, and discovered her passion in full force when she watched a bootleg Villa Villa Colla VHS, the pivotal all-female skate collective in San Diego.

“Villa Villa Colla was the first time I saw a group of girls skating at such a high level. They all had sponsors and really good style. They were very American, very cool. I remember thinking: ​‘Oh my god, this is the dream. I want to be like them. I want to skate with them.’”

• Read next: On The Mountain, Jamie Hewlett’s Gorillaz explore life after death

VVC was built by renegade skate twins Tiffany and Nicole Morgan, who blew their college fund on a female-focused skate collective and brand instead. It doubled as a cult DIY zine, pulling in a tight crew of collaborators/​future legends like Van Nguyen, Michelle Pezel, Lisa Whitaker, Andria Lessler, Faye Jaime, Jamie Sinift and Rebecca Burnquist – many of the same women who had written into Thrasher in 1995. As VVC clocked a devoted following, the collective expanded into filmmaking, further cementing its influence on women’s skateboarding.

At the same time in Brazil, skate icon Liza Araujo launched the zine Check It Out: Skateboarding 4 Girls, alongside Paula Negrão and Luciana Toledo, which united female skaters nationwide.

“Check It Out magazine went on a tour of Brazil,” Bufoni recalls They ran a small contest, and that’s how I met everyone – Micaela Ramirez, Ana Paula Negrão, Liza, and Vanessa Torres. Micaela showed my videos to some people, and a few months later, out of nowhere, my dad got an email inviting me to compete in the X Games in 2007.”

Bufoni’s Brazilian sponsor refused to fund that trip because they thought she was too young, yet she and her dad still jumped at the opportunity. Leticia flew to LA at 14 years old with $200 in her pocket, competed in her first X Games and came in eighth place.

“LA was a whole new thing. Suddenly I was competing with most of the girls I’d been watching on videos. I was skating beside people like Angel Reyn, whose character I always picked while playing Tony Hawk’s video game!” Leticia giggles. ​“The LA scene was about street skating. Back in Brazil it was just parks, schoolyards and perfect ground.”

• Read next: In England’s rural north, skateboarding is femme

What was meant to be a 20-day trip turned into Leticia moving to LA, after winning a bet with her father who challenged her to land an ollie inward heel flip. Landing the trick, her father agreed to let her stay with friends to pursue her dream. Enrolling in Hollywood High School, Leticia spent her freshman year staring out her classroom window at the school’s huge, almost perfect 16-stair rail. A vaunted proving ground, Hollywood High 16 is considered one of the most famous – and most difficult – handrails in the world. Many pro skaters have cemented their status by filming landmark tricks there. (To this day, she hasn’t attempted it, however in 2016 Bufoni filmed her famous frontside feeble grind down the adjacent and equally iconic 12-stair rail.)

“It definitely took time to adapt to the new style. I had to learn to skate bigger jumps and get stronger because I needed to start jumping. Everything on the scene was about gaps, stairs, rails and things I wasn’t used to, let alone learning to speak the language! But within a couple of years, I felt like I was picking it up. That’s when I started winning.”

Bufoni had a laser focus on her future, but not class. As she frames it, she was ​“invited to leave Hollywood High” to pursue her dream, before she was formally expelled.

“Everything happens in Los Angeles, and it was always my dream city,” she says. ​“I was skating with the best pros and on the best skateparks.” She was also one of a few women getting a pay cheque. By 16, Bufoni was sponsored by Osiris and had won her first major international contest at the Maloof Money Cup in Costa Mesa, California. 

“That was my first big cheque for $25,000,” she reflects, noting that she actually won it twice. ​“I also shot a Secret deodorant commercial for $15,000. But I was living a very cheap life. I was sharing an apartment with a friend, paying bills, and saving everything.”

• Read next: Dropping in at Lahore’s first ever public skatepark

After taxes, Leticia put away enough for a down payment on her first apartment in Brazil. But not every skater finding fame in their teens possessed her business acumen.

“I definitely had a really strong background, which helped me a lot. My family was always in my head, telling me what to do. In any sport like this, when you start making money, especially so young, it’s easy to just… get lost,” Leticia explains.

“You want to buy diamonds. You want everything. But my family was always on my side, even though they were in Brazil, guiding me: ​‘Leticia, be smart. Don’t spend your money. Don’t do stupid stuff. If you want to be successful, you have to start saving.’ I saw a lot of athletes at that time losing their homes. I thought they were making a lot of money because they had brand-new cars, nice watches, diamonds – all this stuff. But then, out of nowhere, they lost everything. They didn’t have any more money.”

From the outset of her career, Leticia has held one of the most impressive lists of sponsors.

Is the key to longevity as a skater in 2026 as much about business as it is about talent and conditioning?

“Skateboarding is very different from a lot of sports, because you don’t have to compete your whole life to be a professional and make money,” she says. ​“You can be a street skater, go on trips, film videos, do demos or magazine shoots, and make money doing it. That’s one of the best things about skateboarding – because one day you’re going to get older, and you won’t have the same energy. Your body can’t take it forever.

“Nowadays, on the women’s side, your prime is like 13 or 14 years old,” she adds. ​“When I was competing, your prime was more like 25 or 26.”

• Read next: Sandro Dias breaks a skateboarding record, dropping in from a skyscraper

Rejecting the dominant baggy jeans and t‑shirt looks of the late 2000s, Bufoni is widely known for her distinctive style. ​“When I moved to the US, I wanted to look like a girl. I started getting my hair done for competitions and wearing makeup. I think I was the first skater to wear leggings,” she laughs. ​“A lot of girls were saying: ​‘Why are you doing that? Why do you want to be different? How can you skate like that? We can see your ass!’”

But Bufoni didn’t flinch. ​“I felt good. I was getting into boys. I wanted to prove to my dad – and to the world – that you could be girly and still be a professional skateboarder. I wanted to go to the X Games and look good in my photos,” she says. ​“My whole career, I’ve always done what I wanted. I never let anyone tell me what to do. I don’t need to follow any rules. I just want to look good and feel good. That’s my main goal.”

That confidence opened doors beyond skateboarding. ​“I started getting booked for fitness magazines because I loved working out. I’m from Brazil – we wear bikinis all day,” she shrugs. ​“So I was doing bikini shoots, getting offered amazing opportunities to take skateboarding and my career to another level. I was breaking the bubble, and people were just hating on me for doing that.”

From 2010 to 2014, Bufoni was ranked the world’s number one women’s street skateboarder by the World Cup of Skateboarding. During that period, she was nominated for an ESPY Award for Best Female Action Sports Athlete and began stacking podiums – earning her first X Games medal in 2010 (silver), before winning three X Games gold medals in a single year across multiple locations in 2013.

In 2014, she appeared in Men’s Health wearing nothing but her skateboard and a bikini. The shoot ignited a fierce debate within the skateboarding community over female athletes posing in men’s magazines, and prompted many to question whether Bufoni was ​“core” enough and authentic, or was better placed in the fashion world than skating.

“Some girls who were competing with me redid versions of the photo – they made fun of me. But I thought that was funny. There’s no reason to do that?! If you want to copy me, go for it, but I’m doing me. I don’t care about you.”

• Read next: Laura Crane is waving goodbye to sexism in surfing

In 2015, Bufoni became the first female skater to sign with Nike SB and made history by winning the inaugural Street League Skateboarding (SLS) Women’s Super Crown World Championship. The victory cemented her status as one of the world’s premier street skaters and remains one of her proudest achievements, not just for the title itself, but for the barriers it broke for the next generation of women. In 2018, Forbes named her one of the Most Powerful Women in International Sports and included her on Forbes Brazil’s Under 30 list. She continued her X Games dominance with gold in Shanghai in 2019, represented Brazil at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, and added yet another X Games gold in 2021. 

Along the way, Bufoni celebrated a full-circle moment, becoming a playable character in the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series. She also penned an open letter to her father, reflecting on the obstacles she was forced to push through – and the resilience it took to keep going.

In 2022, the adrenaline junkie set a Guinness World Record for the highest skateboard grind, performed 2,750m above ground out of a flying C‑130 aircraft; the same one used in Fast & Furious. ​“What scares me? Heights – and getting seriously hurt,” she admits. ​“Every stunt I’ve done has involved extensive planning and preparation so it’s perfectly controlled. For the Sky Grind project, I had the best team. I did over 100 skydives to prepare. It took five years of planning and a team of 50 people to pull off. If I had the budget, I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

Her career hasn’t been without consequence. Bufoni endured a televised concussion and a broken hip in 2016 following a brutal lipslide slam, along with multiple foot fractures that nearly ended her future in skating. 

“I don’t have rituals before competing, now I just pray a lot,” she says. ​“I visualise everything. If it’s a line, I’ll close my eyes and run through every trick, second by second, over and over. They call it mind training. Now I do the same thing for racing so I’ll know every corner, every gear, where I have to turn, where I have to break. It helps me a lot.”

• Read next: Catharsis and downhill madness in Medellín’s skate scene

That crossover became official in 2022, when Bufoni began competing in motorsports through the Nitro Rallycross series. Today, she’s behind the wheel for Porsche Brasil. ​“I bought a sports car and was going to the track all the time. I always wanted to race, so after the Olympics I thought: ​‘Why not try?’”

Racing, she says, comes with new challenges. ​“It’s so expensive and very serious. The only way to really practice is on a simulator and it’s not the same. I’m used to skating, where I can train every day and feel ready. In racing, I never feel fully prepared.”

Ultimately, medals aren’t what define her legacy. ​“Of course it’s cool to win competitions. I’m so blessed to say I have the most X Games medals in women’s skateboarding, that’s something incredibly hard to do,” she says. ​“But what I’m most proud of is inspiring more girls to skate. Being an inspiration to Brazilian trailblazers like Rayssa Leal and so many others, that’s everything to me.”

Looking ahead, Bufoni has no intention of slowing down. ​“I want a really long career. I surf every day, play tennis, work out, and skate. I love sports and I take care of my body so I can skate for as long as it lets me. I want to do more big projects, film more videos around the world, be more involved in the scene, and help however I can,” she says.

​“Now women’s skateboarding is huge, and I’m just glad I’m part of it, and somehow I helped it.” When pressed to share her wisdom to the new gen of female skaters on the rise, Leticia grins as we wrap up our chat and she heads back out into the sun to play tennis. ​“I would say follow your dream. Don’t let anyone say you can’t do it. Just prove them wrong. Stay focused, and go for it, every day.”

Tracy Kawalik is a freelance journalist. Follow her on Instagram.

Buy your copy of Huck 83 here.

Enjoyed this article? Follow Huck on Instagram for more from the cutting edge of sport, music and counterculture.

Support stories like this by becoming a member of Club Huck.