Leticia Bufoni: 12 X Games medals, zero at the Olympics — what's that worth in 2026?

Twelve X Games medals. Six of them gold. The most medals ever won by a woman in Summer X Games history. And stacked up against that, one single Olympic line: Tokyo, 2021, ninth place, out before the final.

For five weeks now the same question keeps churning in the comments: does a career like that still count, in a skate world that now gets measured in Olympic rings? In July 2026, in New Orleans, her last two records fell. She was in the building. We’ll give you the answer — just not yet.

São Paulo, age 9: her dad snaps her board in front of her

East side of São Paulo, early 2000s. A little girl hanging in the street with ten boys, all older, all on boards. She’s the only girl. Her father thinks it’s no place for her. One day he grabs the board and breaks it right in front of her. Then he tells her: « You’re done skating. For good. »

She’s told the story plenty of times, always the same words. « He smashed my board in front of me. » What she leaves out is the part that makes the story actually interesting: he came around in the end. Not just came around — he got behind her. The father who snapped the board is the same one who, five years later, let his 14-year-old daughter move to the United States.

Her grandmother had given her her first board at 11. In between there were the concrete blocks around the neighborhood, the curbs, and that tunnel vision kids get when there’s nothing else to do with an afternoon. No computer, no smartphone. Just the street.

14 years old, a one-way ticket to Los Angeles

At 14, she leaves. Not a camp, not a vacation: she moves to California with older friends. She enrolls at Hollywood High School, skips so much class they threaten to kick her out, and eventually drops out for good. The math is brutal and she owns every bit of it: skating or nothing.

That same year, 2007, she enters the X Games for the first time. Eighth. At 14, up against women who’ve been skating since before she was born. Three years later she takes her first medal, then rattles off six straight street medals between 2010 and 2014.

12 medals, 6 gold: the exact count

The number gets thrown around wrong, so let’s put it down straight. Per her official X Games profile: 6 golds, 3 silvers, 3 bronzes. Twelve total. Five of those golds came in street, the sixth from a multi-sport event she won in Barcelona in 2013.

2013, speaking of. That year she becomes the only woman in X Games history to grab three golds in a single season. She’s 20. Two years later she wins the first women’s Street League world title in Chicago, and becomes the first female skater signed by Nike SB. Not the first Brazilian: the first, period.

And then there’s the one nobody has touched since. In 2022 she jumps out of a military plane at 9,000 feet and grinds a rail bolted to the rear ramp, in free fall. Certified by Guinness. It’s absurd, it’s completely pointless, and it’s exactly why her name travels outside the skate world.

The timeline

Tokyo 2021: knocked out one spot from the final

July 26, 2021, Ariake Urban Sports Park. Twenty skaters, one prelim, eight spots in the final. Bufoni finishes ninth with 10.91 points. One spot. She’s one spot short.

Ahead of her, the podium goes to three kids: Momiji Nishiya and Funa Nakayama for Japan, and a 13-year-old Brazilian who’s about to become the most-followed skater on the planet — Rayssa Leal. Bufoni was 28 at the time, with ten X Games medals already. The night of the final, she’s not on the podium and she’s not on the course.

She never went back. Paris 2024 happened without her: Brazil sent a different generation, and Bufoni had already moved on — rally, projects, the league. One Olympic appearance, then. Ninth.

July 2026: both her records fall in 48 hours

And then, this summer, the floor drops out a second time. On July 25, at the Superdome in New Orleans, Chloe Covell wins the street final and hits 12 X Games medals. Bufoni’s record is tied. The next day Mizuho Hasegawa (XC Tokyo) takes silver in park, moves to 13, and becomes the most decorated woman in Summer X Games history.

Three weeks earlier, in Japan, Covell had already matched her other record: five street golds, a mark that had stood since her 2021 win. Two records gone in a month. Picture it: the legend watching her own lines get erased, live, under the lights.

Except no. She wasn’t watching from a distance. She spent the whole weekend with Covell — the Australian said so herself after the win: « Leticia means so much to this sport, and I got to hang out with her all weekend. » Bufoni was there because it’s her contest. Literally.

So what does that do to her place in skating?

Here’s the answer, flat out: no, it changes nothing — and for a reason that has nothing to do with sentimentality. Since September 2025, Leticia Bufoni has been a Founder Athlete of the X Games League, the team-based league that ran its first season in 2026. She isn’t in it as a competitor. She shapes the formats, the athlete experience, the culture. Put another way: the records that fell in July fell inside a contest she helped build.

Add this: she’s also the official athlete representative to World Skate, the international federation recognized by the IOC. The same body that runs Olympic qualification. The skater who never got an Olympic medal has a seat at the table where the Olympic rules get written.

An Olympic medal ranks an athlete on one given day. It says nothing about what’s left ten years later. Bufoni opened the Nike SB door for women skaters, she made the women’s circuit economically viable by making it watchable, and she built the backdrop Covell, Leal and Hasegawa are winning in today. The XGL’s 2026 season is the proof: her ideas are the ones running the show, while her numbers get beaten.

The takeaway

She’s 33. She’s not chasing a ranking anymore. She rides abandoned spots, she races rally raid, she’s building a league. And for a whole lot of girls starting out today, she stays the first image they ever had of a pro woman skater.

What Tokyo didn’t hand her, ten years on the ground handed her another way. Medals get counted. A place gets taken.