Women’s Skateboard Street: Monster Energy’s Rayssa Leal takes Second Place
Earlier on Sunday, the highly anticipated Women’s Skateboard Street final unfolded under blue skies in Des Moines.
With eight of the world’s leading street skaters competing for the top spot, countries represented included Austria, Belgium, Brazil, The Netherlands and United States. Each rider received two Runs as well as five Best Trick attempts to build a score composed of the four highest scores.
Monster Energy’s Rayssa Leal came into Sunday’s final as the youngest skater in an elite field including reigning SLS World Champion Pamela Rosa. No stranger to high-stakes contest situations, Leal put the rest of the field on notice by landing a perfect first run including backside Smith grind the A-frame rail, gap out to crooked grind the Hubba, frontside feeble grind the rail and backside lipslide the eleven-stair rail for 4.25 points. In Run 2, she upped the difficulty with a frontside bluntslide the A-frame rail, and backside 5-0 grind the tall Hubba for 4.62 points.
Going into the Best Trick section, Leal maintained her streak of perfectly landed tricks with a frontside bluntslide down the big rail (3.33 points) followed by a perfect frontside nosegrind (2.15 points). Reaching deep into her bag of tricks, Leal pulled a highly technical kickflip frontside boardslide the big rail for 4.18 points. Rounding out her strong performance, she finessed a stylish backside Smith grind down the big Hubba for 4.25 points.
With a total score of 17.30 points, Leal took a strong second-place finish close behind fellow Brazilian rider Pamela Rosa in first place. On the strength of today’s result, Leal currently ranks second in the Skateboarding Olympic Street Discipline Rankings for Women’s Street Skateboarding.
Leal first attracted attention in 2015 at the age of 6 by heelflipping down a set of stairs while wearing a fairy costume in a video that went viral across the globe. She has since proven a strong competitor at the highest international level: In 2019, she made history as the youngest competitor to ever win an SLS tour stop at age 11 and took second place at the SLS World Championship in Brazil that year. Before the pandemic, she also won the FAR’n High competition in France and placed fourth in her X Games debut in Minneapolis in 2019. Watch closely as Leal is poised to head into the first-ever Olympic street skating competition.
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