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| Fabiola Da Silva |
The Lounge Feature |
Fabiola Da Silva Interview
Words by Chris Mitchell
‘I’m wearing pink panties today.’
Fabiola points this out the way she might say ‘I need another quarter for the meter’. We’re standing on the deck of a vert ramp, getting ready to shoot a commercial spot for one of her new sponsors, Ignite, when she offers this insight into her underwear choice.
Then, she drops in.
If we were to write a movie about Fabiola da Silva, I suppose we could open on a wall of framed photos featuring the best female athletes the world has ever known: Nadia Comaneci, Michelle Kwan, Maria Sharapova. These are the women who kick ass in their respective sports. They have square metres in their homes devoted to their trophy collections, and speak on panels with other well-respected athletes. The thing is – and I say this with the utmost respect – compared to Fab, they all suck.
Sure they have gold medals and corporate endorsements. They do photo shoots for Sports Illustrated and cereal and organic non-stick margarine spray. In their own world of female athletics, they have risen to the top and they deserve to be there. But if you put them in an arena with the top men in their sports, they wouldn’t stand a chance. Think either of the Williams sisters would last against Roger Federer? No way. Sasha Cohen versus Plushenko? Not a chance.
But in the world of inline skating, there is no gender division. There is just athlete versus athlete and Fab kills it. She is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the woman with the most X Games medals (eight – seven of which are Gold). At the 2006 World Championships in Dallas, Texas, she came in forth, just missing the podium. The closest female behind her finished tenth.
This Brazilian beauty is no joke.
Act 1: Fab’s tomboy beginnings
Fabiola has never considered herself a girly girl. She was raised in a simple home in Sao Paulo, Brazil where she played any sport that piqued her interest – basketball, volleyball, football, soccer, swimming. At the age of twelve, she started kickboxing and, in no time at all, became a champion in her class.
‘I grew up in a simple family,’ says Fab. ‘There were just four of us – my mom, dad, sister and me in Sao Paulo. My dad always worked really hard to give us what we wanted and both my parents were very supportive.’
She started traditional roller skating when she was 14, then picked up skateboarding. When inline skates came to Brazil, she fell in love with rollerblading.
‘What first attracted me to inline was the fact that I could do whatever I wanted, create my own tricks and have my own style. It was different than the other sports.’
She didn’t speak any English when the X Games invited her to come to America in 1996. She made an immediate splash, a beautiful, exotic girl doing back flips on the vert ramp in the middle of a ‘men’s competition’. That year, Rollerblade offered her her first big sponsorship. She went back to Brazil for a few months, but America beckoned and, when she turned 18, she moved to California.
Act 2: The blossoming
Fab immediately found herself at the epicentre of media frenzy. She picked up endorsements from The Gap, Mountain Dew and the Australian wheel company, Cozmo. For the first time in her life, people were seeing her not just as an athlete, but as a beautiful girl with an athletic gift.
‘When I was young, I didn’t really care about looks,’ Fab says. ‘But then I got older and I started to realise that I’m a girl. I had to start acting more feminine.’
This would be the part of the movie with a montage of images where the diamond in the rough picks up a little polish. Her friend Mary Nelson taught her how to put on makeup and pout for the camera. Her friends Azikiwee Anderson and Suki taught her how to shop for girly clothing and match her shoes to her outfits. She attended college classes to learn English, but her sound bites came out more like Jay Z and Missy Elliot and all the hip-hop artists that she had discovered on the wes’ide.
In no time, Fab found herself the object of amorous advances. Front of the pack was inline legend, Jon Julio. It was 1997, and inline skating was at its peak. As news of their relationship hit, the two became the celebrity couple of rollerblading.
Fab and Jon travelled the world on the wave of Rollerblade’s popularity – Europe, Australia, Asia. There was no stopping the growth of inline.
It didn’t take long for Hollywood to discover the Brazilian beauty. She was cast in commercials for Capri Sun and Mountain Dew. In 1999, Disney produced a movie called Brink, which featured a fiery Latin skater named ‘Gabriella’. It was an unofficial homage to Fab, who did the stunts for the young Latina actress.
As Fab’s career skyrocketed, she sent money back to Brazil to help support her family. Her father had been diagnosed with cancer, and he was getting too weak to do much work. Her family flew to the States to watch Fab compete on the ASA Pro Tour and cheered in the stands while Fab picked up medal after medal.
On 4 July 2003, Fab’s father passed away. ‘I got my personality from my father,’ admits Fab. ‘He was really kind. He didn’t know how to say “no”. He never stressed out about anything.’
Fab went back to Brazil for a while. She took care of her mother and reassessed her life. Inline skating was declining in popularity. There were even rumors that ESPN was going to drop the sport from the X Games (which they did in 2005). Her relationship with Julio had ended some years earlier, and she had started dating a Brazilian skateboarder by the name of Sandro Dias.
It turned out to be a good move. The pair picked up a big endorsement from LG and began touring with the LG Action Sports World Tour. While other professional inline skaters were being forced to bus tables at pizza parlors or sell real estate to make ends meet, Fab was still touring around the globe, and her skating was more powerful than ever.
In 2004, she started the Fabiola da Silva Circuit, an amateur inline competition series, which qualified Brazilian rollerbladers for the Latin X Games. The following year, ESPN shut down their Latin competition, but Fab’s Circuit carried on (and will continue in 2007). In 2005, she became the first and only woman to pull a double back flip on a vert ramp, a feat shared by only a handful of pro skaters.
Act 3: The next big thing
At the age of 27, Fab’s career is still on the rise. She just picked up sponsorship deals from Ignite and Solar Safe, and she is looking forward to another year on the Action Sports World Tour. Still, she is taking steps to balance out her life.
Since the beginning of the year, she has been taking classes to learn massage therapy, and she is enrolling in acting school. She works out every day in the gym, and surfs as much as possible. When things get hectic, she does yoga.
‘I don’t want to rely on skating forever,’ she says. ‘I want to learn how to do different things.’
We are finishing our interview in the backyard of a mansion where Fab is filming a Public Service Announcement about the dangers of sun exposure. There are camera grips and stylists buzzing around, making sure everything is just perfect. Suddenly, the director calls ‘Action!’ and Fab tosses her hair.
‘I’m Fabiola da Silva,’ she says. ‘Inline skater.’
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