Dubai: Rayssa Leal, the women’s gold medal winner at skateboarding’s recent Street 2022 World Championships held at the Aljada Skate Park in Sharjah, has 6.4 million followers on Instagram.

To put that into context, her Brazilian compatriots Ederson, the Manchester City goalkeeper, has 3.4 million Instagram followers; Fabinho, the Liverpool midfielder, has 2.7 million followers; and Gabriel Martinelli, the Arsenal attacker, also has 2.7 million followers.

Having 6.4 million followers is “a lot”, Leal admits. But it’s what that following enables her to do for the sport she loves so much that matters, says Leal, the silver medal winner in the women’s street skateboarding at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

Reference point

“Before the Olympics, my goal was to reach one million Instagram followers, and then that happened very quickly,” Leal smiles. “Then, day by day almost, it became like two million, three million and then more than six million.

“But I’m happy because I’ve become a reference point and every time I find out about a child starting to skate because of me, I’m like ‘ok, that’s why I have my social media and all my team working for this’. We are reaching many children and I’m very happy about that.”

“Otherwise,” the 15-year-old from Imperatriz, in the northeast of Brazil, adds “I don’t think too much about it – it just happened.”