The Paris Games have been difficult to cope with for Olympic skaters.
Brazilian Rayssa Leal filmed herself skating through the 2,000-year-old city after official transport and a scheduled bus failed to pick up the 16-year-old and her teammates.
Instead, the group consisting of Leal, her teammate Pamela Rosa and Dutchman Keet Oldenbeuving embarked on a trek through the chaotic streets of Paris in a desperate attempt to return to the Olympic Village.
“This is how we’re going to return to the Olympic Village,” Leal said in Portuguese as he used a phone app to project clown makeup on his face. “We’re going to the village like this.”
But as the U.S. team has discovered, skating around the Olympic Village is frowned upon.
Brazil’s Rayssa Leal (left) and USA’s Minna Stess (right) at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games
The Olympic Village can be seen from the roof of the building where the Swiss athletes live.
Team USA’s Nyjah Huston trains during a skateboarding training session in Paris
Team USA’s Minna Stess was eager to cruise her board around the 52-hectare village, where some 14,500 athletes and their staff can mingle freely without the COVID restrictions that limited competitors at the Tokyo Games.
There was just one problem with that plan.
“They yell at you,” said Stess, 18.
Skateboarding’s reputation has changed rapidly since its inclusion on the Tokyo Olympic programme three years ago, when the IOC’s suited-and-tie-wearing decision-makers welcomed a sport once roundly shunned by the mainstream.
However, the Olympic Village has not welcomed skateboarding, as the sport is considered a nuisance, as it was in decades past.
“I was riding my bike, but I was kind of looking out the balcony and I saw (American street competitor Paige Heyn) coming back because I hadn’t seen her (she was practicing) and some guy yelled at her for skating,” Stess told reporters.
‘So, I’m a little scared to skate in the village.’
The 18-year-old was fearless, however, having won bronze at last year’s World Championships and hoping to make an impact in Paris after failing to qualify for Tokyo.
“Winning a medal, you know, for your country and for yourself as well, is a great honor,” he said.
His American teammate Nyjah Huston, who competes in men’s street skating, said skating for the United States on the Olympic stage was “extra motivation.”
Huston, who said he was surprised he was able to skate successfully at the Tokyo Village, finished seventh at the last Games.
“Skateboarding came from the United States, specifically from California, where I’m from. And I feel it’s our duty to go out and skate and skate,” he told reporters. “To skate around the country.”