With the second of the skateboarding events of the Tokyo Olympics just around the corner, we figured it was a good opportunity to shine some light on Rayssa Leal and Sky Brown. This pair, along with the likes of Momiji Nishiya (Japan's 13 year old gold medalist in women's street), are about to reset skateboarding completely. You'd have to have absolute no interest in skateboarding to have not heard the names Rayssa Leal and Sky Brown before. They, along with a swelling group of mini rippers, represent probably the biggest paradigm-shift that skateboard culture has ever experienced. Obviously, it is a clear and evident fact that skateboard's embarrassing gender imbalance is finally over. Skateboard participation numbers are up full stop, with female skateboard participation exploding globally. The boy's club is finished... The reasons for this explosion in female skaters in manifold: from the current visibility of pioneers like Alexis Sablone, Lizzie Armanto and Elissa Steamer, through to the obvious power of Social Media at connecting once disparate communities and inspiring people to get involved. Our own UK-based Girl Skate UK network is one such example. What began as a one-woman project to try and create spaces for the (then) tiny UK female/non-binary skate scene to connect, has since mushroomed in a massive network of skaters across the country running everything from skate schools to skate comps. You could do a lot worse than to check out their website at girlskateuk.com Anyhow, we've wandered away from the specific topic of this blog post, namely Rayssa Leal and Sky Brown. These two (for us at least) represent the direction that the future of skateboarding is headed in. Both are technically children at 13 years of age. Both are in the Olympics, (Rayssa has already won a silver medal and Sky is highly likely to win a medal too) and most importantly, they both absolutely fucking rip. Not 'good for a girl', or 'good for a child' - just good, full stop. We're kind of assuming that you all knew this already but, just in case, (and because it's the Olympic Park skating event this week) it seemed timely. Unlike the footage of Rayssa at the top of this blog which is all super recent and was only uploaded this week, we've struggled to find much recent footage of Sky in YouTube format since most of her stuff ends up on her parent-run Instagram page. With that said, it's still worth posting the Almost x Skateistan clip of her from 2019 (see below) just because it's dope and the project was a sick one. I'm not entirely sure she still rides for Almost skateboards though as there were a couple of vague ads for a sinister sounding board brand called the 'Monarch Project' claiming Sky Brown as a pro, (along with Leticia Bufoni) recently. Either way, she's 13, she spins head high mute grabbed McTwists and if she's not a millionaire already, she will be soon. Also - this: Rayssa Leal was 11 here. Jesus wept. (P.S. The Men's Park Olympic contest is on Thursday August 5th from 1am - 4.30 am. Women's park in on Wednesday August 4th from 1am - 4.30am Uk time) If you, or your kids have just started out skateboarding, then check out our extensive range of smaller-sized complete set ups here or by clicking the Almost complete below.