By Chloe Merrell and Virgilio Franceschi Neto
(Olympics.com) Raicca Ventura sat back and soaked in the celebrations.
Thanks in part to her efforts, Brazil had just completed a sweep at the park skateboardimg World Championships.
Then aged 17, she had returned home victorious in the women’s division, just ahead of Olympic bronze medallist Augusto Akio, who had pulled out all the stops in the men’s event to secure the skateboarding powerhouse a double win in the discipline.
The two victories moved Brazil’s gold medal tally in the skateboard disciplines at the World Skates Games 2024 up to four after Rayssa Leal and Gui Khury had clinched victory in the women’s street and men’s vert events, respectively, earlier in the month.
It was, by all accounts, an entirely dominant display of Brazil’s skateboarding depth, and the carnival atmosphere that erupted in the face of their world championship celebrated their newly asserted ascendency.
But while Ventura enjoyed the scene she had helped energise, there was a much more personal dimension to her win in Ostia, Rome, last September.
At the Olympic Games 2024, less than two months before, she had fallen well short of her intended target.
Struggling for traction in the prelims, Ventura found herself on the wrong side of the cut and the expected finalist and medal hopeful was forced to watch the final from the sidelines. The disappointment of not having shown her best self in Paris had hardened into a resolve for the world champs in Italy.
“The Olympic Games – they taught me that everyone, from the first place to the last, everyone who is there, in fact, athletes from all sports, are there because they are very good at what they do: the best in their nations. So, regardless of the outcome, I know everyone who is there, everyone tried very hard to be there”, Ventura told the Olympics.com Portuguese podcast, looking back at her triumphant turnaround.
“You train for four years of your life for that moment. So you want to do your best. You want to be able to do everything you have. You want to be the best you can be there,” she continued.
“I think that, in addition to the training sessions where I trained a lot for the Olympics and got there and didn’t get the result I expected, I think that gave me the strength to be able to arrive at the World Championships and say to myself, ‘now it’s my time to show what I came here to do’.
“[My result] showed me that I can do it, even if I think that others say so, or that everything shows me that I can’t. I have to know that I can do it. And that showed me that I am more than I think.”
Raicca Ventura: “I feel my self-esteem is better”
Ticking off the Olympics as an experience, and claiming the park world crown, also appear to have shifted something more broadly in Ventura.
“I feel like I’m better than I used to be, you know? But it’s not like I’m better. I feel my self-esteem is better,” she explained.
And certainly, the Brazilian is not wasting time putting that renewed confidence to work. In a sport that is constantly evolving and where newcomers bud all the time, Ventura knows that staying at the top requires constant toiling, even if that means travelling to bigger and greater ramps and parks around the world.
“Everyone is looking for that medal,” she said. “That’s why every hour a girl learns a new trick, and another one wants to learn too, and the level is growing. And nowadays girls are doing a lot of tricks that they couldn’t do, so they’re having to work to compete at a higher level.”
For a skater who hits the bowls and ramps for up to five hours a day, training sometimes until the point the park closes for the night, hard work isn’t much of a step up for the skater.
“I don’t know how, I just know that since I’ve been a skater, since I was a child, I think I’ve kind of been used to this pressure, because you always, always want, like, to be first in every championship,” Ventura said, talking about a drive and ability to embrace pressure.
“Since my first championship, I wanted to be in first place. Now it’s not always that we’re going to come first, so we have to learn to deal with that like: ‘Oh, okay, let’s train more for the next one’.
“I demand more of myself, but I don’t feel bad either,” she continued. “I think: ‘I can do better, so come on, Raicca, let’s do better here’.”
Raicca Ventura: “I hope I’ll get a medal for Brazil”
The churn of the skateboard scene and the drive to keep pace come back into focus with the arrival of the World Skateboarding Tour’s first World Cup stop of 2025, in Ostia, Rome – the same place Ventura claimed her world title.
The event will dish out ranking points, which will later be used to shape the list of skaters that will get to join the road to Los Angeles 2028, the next Olympic Games.
To some, California may seem a far-off destination in the distance, with three years to go until LA28 arrives, and it’s exactly that complacency Ventura is banking on as she prepares to drop in.
“I think this year is a little more relaxed because the Olympics have just passed. So everyone’s kind of calm,” she explained, with a smile. “But that’s good because I’m not calm. I’m going to skate because while you’re calm, I’m training and I will get you.”
Her ambitions for the WST event, beginning on 4 June with the women’s open qualifier, include laying down some new tricks and reasserting her presence. The bigger picture plan is eventually to get them consistent enough that, come LA28, she is ready to go.
For it will be in California that Ventura hopes to write another new chapter in Brazilian skateboarding history, and mastermind another day no one will ever forget.
“My goal is to get everything right in Los Angeles, because if I get it right, I know it will work.
“I’m going to set that as a goal because if I get it right, I hope I’ll get the medal for Brazil: Brazil’s first (women’s) medal in park at the Olympics.”
