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Brazilian skateboarder Rayssa Leal won a bronze medal in the street skateboarding event on Sunday. In contrast to the Satanic opening ceremony, she quoted the Bible after her big win.
Leal, a 16-year-old Christian, proudly quoted John 14:6 when she won her bronze medal, the Christian Post reported.
“Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,'” the verse reads.
Leal also performed the reading in sign language.
At 13, Leal became Brazil’s youngest Olympian during the Games in 2021 when she won a silver medal.
This year, she made an amazing comeback. Her score of 92.88 lifted her from fifth place to third and a bronze medal.
“When I was very young, I dreamed of becoming a skateboard athlete,” Leal said. “And here I am, with a second Olympic medal from the games. Once again, thank God I won a medal. I’m very happy to be here.”
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Skating has always had a lot of different subgroups of people, including people who identify with Christianity, with companies like Santa Cruz or Zero putting out boards with religious graphics, Christian Hosoi creating the "Christ air" trick which became a (slightly irreverent) Tiktok meme, and other such things. I think I've seen skatepark(s) run by something like baptists before that had Bible verses on display.
I don't really feel skateboarding needs to be in the Olympics as it feels more like a subjective art form (although they do have artsy competitions like figure skating I guess), but since it's here it's nice the OP competitor spoke about the important things (religion).
edit: not something to cancel necessarily, but the Thrasher logo (top popular skateboard magazine) is literally 666 Baphomet / pentagram sometimes. Why not "cancel" it? I think trying might embolden them. You could instead encourage them to use other logos as they do sometimes. Or promote a competing magazine, but honestly they're kind of the top dog. This illustrates the polarization in skating (some christians versus some "satanists" of sorts?). Regrettably, Transworld mag stopped doing physical prints but they still have skateboarding.com .