Stranded Brazilian skateboarders brave busy Paris streets as Team USA gets 'yelled at' for riding through the Olympic village at 2024 Games

The Paris Games have proven difficult to navigate for Olympic skateboarders.

Brazil's Rayssa Leal recorded herself skating through the 2,000-year-old city after an official transport and a scheduled bus failed to pick up the 16-year-old and her teammates. 

Instead, the group consisting of Leal, teammate Pamela Rosa, and the Netherlands' Keet Oldenbeuving embarked on a trek across the chaotic Paris streets in a desperate attempt to return to the Olympic Village.

'This is how we're going back to the Olympic Village,' Leal said in Portuguese while using a phone app to project clown makeup onto her face. 'We're going to the village like this.'

But as the American team has discovered, skating through the Olympic village is frowned upon.

Team USA's Minna Stess had been eager to ride her board around the 52-hectare village, where some 14,500 athletes and their staff are free to mingle without the COVID restrictions that limited competitors at the Tokyo Games.

There was just one problem with that plan.

'You get yelled at,' said the 18-year-old Stess.

Skateboarding's reputation has changed rapidly after its inclusion in the Olympics programme in Tokyo three years ago, as the suit-and-tie decision makers at the IOC welcomed the sport that was once squarely rejected by the mainstream.

The Olympic village, however, has not embraced skateboards, with the sport viewed as a nuisance as it was in decades past.

'I rode bikes around, but I was like looking out the balcony to see [U.S. street competitor Paige Heyn] coming back because I hadn't seen her - she was at practice - and some dude yelled at her for skating,' Stess told reporters.

'So, I'm kind of scared to skate at the village.'

The 18-year-old had no fear, however, as she claimed bronze at the World Championships last year and is hoping to make an impact in Paris after she missed qualifying for Tokyo.

'Winning a medal just, you know, for your country and just for yourself too, is a big honour,' she said.

Her U.S. teammate Nyjah Huston, who competes in men's street, said skating for the United States on the Olympic stage was 'extra motivation.'

Huston, who said he was surprised to have got away with skating at the Tokyo village, finished seventh at the last Games.

'Skateboarding came from America - California, specifically, where I'm from. And I feel like it's our duty to go out there and rip,' he told reporters. 'Rip it for the country.'