The tiniest skateboarder from Tokyo’s Olympics grows tall in Paris

PARIS — She was a child three years ago standing before the empty seats at the Tokyo Olympics, just 13 years old with a helmet too big for her head and a skateboarding silver medal around her neck. And when Brazil’s tiny street skateboarder Rayssa Leal left the stadium that day she said that all she wanted to do was “go back to being the little girl I am.”

Sunday afternoon, she stood in another street skateboard final in another Olympic stadium, this one in the center of Paris, completely filled with fans, half of them in Brazil’s colors jumping and shouting her name. At 16, she was taller now, with long waving hair and the more defined features of a high-schooler. Brazilian music pounded her earphones. She was down to her last trick, more than 80 points out of third place and another medal. She needed a miracle. She looked up. The Brazilians roared.

Later, Leal would say the trick she landed off the railing to win bronze, a kick flip frontside board slide, was one she had never done in competition. She wasn’t sure she wanted to try. But the shouts were so loud, the noise booming around Place de la Concorde, she jumped.

And when she landed her skateboard on the ground, still standing upright, the Brazilian fans howled as if she had won the whole event. Her final score of 253.37 was not going to be enough to get her past Japan’s Coco Yoshizawa and Liz Akama, who would win gold and silver. Yet listening to the Brazilians in the crowd, it felt like her bronze medal was the biggest victory of the day.

“The fact they have a Brazilian playing in the Olympics means everything,” she said afterward through a translator, when asked why so many people from her country had come to this event. “They know if you dream high your dreams can come true.”

[Photos: Highlights from Day 2 of the Paris Summer Olympics.]

No sport missed the fans in Tokyo’s pandemic Games more than skateboarding. So much of skateboarding’s vigor comes from noise around it. Tokyo’s empty temporary stadium next to Tokyo Harbor left the sport’s Olympic debut silent and sluggish. Skaters said the vacant seats just never felt right.

On Sunday, inside the temporary venue with metal seats in la Concorde and views from the stands of the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the Seine and the Grand Palais, the world finally saw how much a crowd matters in Olympic skateboarding.

Every time Leal prepared to try a jump or a trick, the Brazilians stood, they waved flags, they jumped, they called her name, They chanted “Brazil, Brazil, Brazil.” At some point during the final, with the sun beating down, they did the wave.

“They’re going to run out of green and yellow fabric in Brazil,” the arena announcer shouted on the speaker at one point.

When the last trick had been done and it was certain Leal would medal, the fans surged down from the seats, onto the concourse that rings the skateboard park. They chanted “Rayssa, Rayssa, Rayssa.” She waved. They chanted her name again.

Soon the medals were brought into the stadium and Paris 2024 officials tried to start the ceremony, but rules prohibited them from doing so until the fans were in their seats. The arena announcer shouted for everyone to leave the concourse, but the dancing Brazilians would not listen

Finally, security guards in gray shirts arrived to push into the throng of Brazil fans, ushering them back to their seats. The medals were handed out; Japan’s anthem played; and then the Brazilians surged back onto the concourse, leaning against the railings. Leal held her medal. They shouted. She pulled out a phone and took a selfie with the two Japanese skaters. She laughed. The fans laughed.

Then to the horror of the minders who were trying to urge her to leave the stadium, Leal ran up the skate ramps to the edge of the north stands. She slapped hands with the Brazilians, took their phones and snapped selfies. They danced together. She went to the edge of the stands on the south side and did the same thing. She took a Brazil flag and draped it around her shoulders.

The roar felt it could go on all night. Almost an hour after the end of the competition, the last Brazilian fan exited the Place de la Concorde. Not long after, Leal went to the tent for another Olympic news conference, three years after the one in Tokyo.

Back then, she looked little on the big stage with all the television lights beaming down on her. The answers she gave that day came in a teeny voice. Her words were tentative. The moment felt so huge.

On Sunday, she sat straight in her chair, looking like a precocious teenager who has seen the world. She showed Yoshizawa and Akama how to work their earpieces. Someone asked if she was surprised to “make history at 16.” She smiled at the question.

“I think we make history every day in our daily lives,” she said through the translator.

She leaned back and flipped her hair, the tiniest skateboarder wanting to go back to being a little girl no more.