2024-07-29 18:10:02
Brazil’s youngest-ever double Olympic medallist
Just as in the prelims, Leal once again faltered on both her runs — except this time she was not alone.
Only eventual winner Yoshizawa Coco successfully landed a first run, putting down an 85.02 effort. It would only be challenged by Liz Akama at the close of the section, producing an 89.26 on her second attempt.
The superior run scores left the two Japanese boarders out in front of the rest of the field, and there they stayed as they grappled for gold as the trick section unfolded.
For the rest of the field, bronze was the only real medal at stake. And Leal, beginning the trick portion with a 71.66 this time in the tank, found herself again with her back against the wall urged onwards by a carnivalesque chorus.
But whereas before she had winced at their might, this time when Leal needed it most, she drank in their energy.
Looking down at the park, poised to deliver her final trick, Leal closed her eyes, taking it all in one last time. And she delivered.
An 88.83 closing effort lifted Leal into third place and when the last challenger for the medal — 14-year-old Cui Chenxi of the People’s Republic of China — fell, the rapture resumed.
Leal had done it. Brazil had done it.
She was now her country’s youngest-ever double Olympic medallist and skateboarding’s first.
Relics of history may have been standing by, but on a sunny Sunday in Paris Leal was the one marking a moment few would ever forget.
