Olympic Skateboarder Rayssa Leal Is Calling Attention to Environmental Threats in Brazil

IOC / Rodrigo Lima Junior 

Rayssa Leal is rocking a sun-bleached black Nike hat with raised bubble letters when she joins our video call. The Brazilian Olympian looks like your average teenager with a bright smile and wispy face-framing bangs that she’s braided on either side. You’d never know the 16-year-old is one of skateboarding’s most prominent young stars.

“Skateboarding is sensational, incredible, and you’ll fall in love the first time,” Leal says of her favorite sport. Offering advice to anyone who wants to try skateboarding, Leal recommends working hard, but also having fun. That’s been the key to her own success at such a young age.

Winning silver at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics when she was 13, Leal not only became the youngest athlete to medal in 85 years, but also solidified her talent on an international level. Three years later, Leal has more than 6.4 million followers on Instagram and several world championships to her name, including the 2023 Summer X Games and the 2023 Pan American Games.

While Leal’s sights are set on gold during this year's games, she’s also attending the Paris Olympics as an International Olympic Committee (IOC) Sustainability Ambassador.

“It’s a great honor to be a part of the team of ambassadors,” Leal tells Teen Vogue. “I can give my image to something important. I want to share with my followers and all of the skateboarding fans good practices for the environment and spread the message about preserving nature.”

On the heels of her ambassadorship, Leal revealed her Olympics skateboard, featuring two beautifully colored hyacinth macaws. The birds, called arara in Brazil, are native to Leal’s home country and were chosen to represent the need to protect both the Amazon and all the species within it.

“We wanted to give an idea of what represents Brazil and what the real situation is of the environment here,” Leal adds. “We have to take care of the environment not only for this generation, but for the next generation too. We have to pay attention, because nature is life. It’s impossible to live without good preservation of the environment.”

Currently, Leal’s home country faces a series of potentially devastating environmental issues, including the rapid deforestation of the Amazon rainforest and illegal wildlife trafficking that has a massive impact on the ecosystem and local diversity. With a reported 13% of the world’s animal and plant life found in Brazil, it’s especially important to protect the habitat or risk extinction of mass amounts of flora and fauna.

Ahead of the Olympic games, Leal is taking time to train in her hometown of Imperatriz, in the northeastern part of Brazil. Surrounded by mango and acerola cherry trees, Leal will spend the remaining days practicing on the skatepark built on her family farm alongside fellow Brazilian Olympic skateboarder Giovanni Vianna. “I’m happy and anxious,” she says of her intense practices. “I think about the Olympics every day. We’re so close to the games, I have to give it my all.”

Focused on positive thinking and leaning on her friends and family for support, Leal isn’t worried about the pressure of living up to the Tokyo games. She’ll do exactly what she did at the previous Olympics: focus solely on her sport. Yes, that means she’ll forgo exploring Paris until she’s back in October for Paris Fashion Week.

Interview translated from Portuguese by Virgilio Franceschi Neto.

Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue