Lucas Rabelo calls for attention and chances for skate talent in the Northeast

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A few days after getting the most expressive result of his career, skateboarder Lucas Rabelo, 22, wanted to share what he felt. He was in Miami with his girlfriend, two-time world skateboarding champion Aori Nishimura, and had been runner-up in the Super Crown, the final round of Street League Skateboarding (SLS).

“I called Aori and said, ‘I’m almost crying because I remembered where I came from'”, Lucas tells sheet. “It’s not easy when you don’t have a good condition to travel, compete and live on your dream. Even leaving a place without many opportunities, I managed to reach my goals.”

Lucas Rabelo grew up in Pirambu, a poor neighborhood in Fortaleza. He was able to spend little time with his father, who died when the athlete was still little, but it is possible that he inherited a taste for the sport from him.

The mother said that in the very first days of her son’s life, when they returned home, the father put the boy on his lap and climbed on a skateboard. Without the father’s daily presence, the lessons learned about training wheels came in contact with friends who also traveled in the region.

Lucas got his own skateboard when he was 11 years old. With the support of local businessmen, he started to participate and win championships in Ceará, which drew attention to his potential.

When he was 13, businessman Rafael Xavier went to the boy’s house to talk to his family. He had a proposal: to take him to Porto Alegre, where he would have housing and sponsorship to make skateboarding videos and pursue a professional career in the sport.

“A 13 year old kid asking to leave the house, crazy, but I was always very sure I wanted to make a living from it. I talked to my mother, she said it was my dream and I had seen things happen for skaters that way” , he claims.

Authorization granted, the teenager gained the chance to envision professionalization and also a second family in Rio Grande do Sul. He started to live in the agent’s house and live with his wife and daughter. He also began to study English and received newspapers to read on his car trips.

“We used to live in Gravataí, it’s half an hour [de viagem] to Porto Alegre, and he gave us the newspaper to read on the road instead of just sleeping or fiddling with the phone. I was used to seeing the same things over and over again, related to skateboarding. When I picked up the newspaper, I opened my mind, I was more connected to what was happening”, he says.

Lucas’ rise in the sport continued and led him to major national competitions. In 2018, still as an amateur, he surprised by overtaking the future Olympic medalist Kelvin Hoefler and winning a stage of the STU (Brazilian circuit).

In early 2019, he was called up for the first time to be part of the Brazilian team, looking for a place in the Tokyo Games. But he didn’t keep the regularity, in addition to having been hindered by a knee injury, and ended up out of the next call made by the Brazilian Skate Confederation.

It recovered at the end of that year with third place in the main event on the national calendar, the STU Open. Back in the national team in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, he still tried to chase the Olympic spot after the resumption of competitions, but he didn’t score enough points to be among the top three in the country. In addition to Kelvin, Felipe Gustavo and Giovanni Vianna were representatives on the street.

After the sport’s debut at the Games, attention turned to SLS. Lucas was still a rookie in the league, but managed to place in the top eight to play for the Super Crown on the last 14th.

In the tournament decision, which has the weight of a world championship, he missed his first two maneuvers. He would have to get everything right from then on to fight for the podium. “There I said, ‘Wow, I’m really in the street league, living what I was watching on TV.’ That gave me some pressure,” he admits.

He managed to control his emotions and then performed four accurate maneuvers, which yielded excellent grades (8.9, 8.7, 9.3 and 9.1) and took him to second position. It was only behind the American Jagger Eaton.

It is by realizing where he has arrived that his life story comes to mind and makes him proud of his origins. “Northeast, Fortaleza, Pirambu, everything makes me proud. We are used to seeing people from other parts of Brazil stand out in the world of skateboarding. In the Northeast there are many good people, many lost talents there,” he says.

“That’s why I always show that I’m from Fortaleza and that people should, yes, look to the Northeast. Open their minds and see that there are also people there with the potential to conquer the world,” he adds.

On Friday (26), he confirmed the good moment with the gold medal at the Junior Pan American Games, in Colombia.

The sport opened doors and made the boy from Pirambu a citizen of the world. Today Lucas lives in California with Aori, 20. The Japanese participated in the Olympics at home and was considered one of the favorites on the street, but got injured the day before the competition and came in fifth place.

The Cearense is amused to tell about the beginning of their relationship, facilitated by translation applications on cell phones about two years ago. “The problem was not understanding each other’s English, but we turned that into a good thing,” he says, adding that Aori’s Portuguese is already much better than his Japanese.

Because of the pandemic, Lucas couldn’t even go to Tokyo to honor his girlfriend. In Paris-2024, who knows, the two may be together at the Games to help each other in the competition and fight for unprecedented medals.

“I want to make it clear to people that no matter where you are from, you can also reach out and make it happen,” he says.

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