London-born Cordano Russell making his Olympic debut in Paris

Cordano Russell set to take on Paris The London, Ont.-born skateboarder will compete at the 2024 Paris Olympics. CTV's Brent Lale reports.

Cordano Russell has exploded onto the world scene and in the past year the London, Ont.- born skateboarder as gone from relative obscurity, to the top-ranked street skater in Canada.

Now he is set to compete at the Olympic Games in Paris on Saturday.

At 6’3, and 230 pounds, Russell is impossible to miss.With size and athleticism, he was on track for a D1 Football Scholarship and potentially a professional career as an elite defensive player, but gave that up to pursue his passion in a sport which also can be very physical.

While others wear a lot of padding on the course, he prefers just shorts and a headband.

“It’s one thing that you learn quickly,” says the 19-year old Russell. “You know that you're going to fall way more than you want to land a trick in skateboarding. I was never afraid to get down and dirty. I was always the, young kid who like to jump off the marble table, or off the couch and just laugh it off.”

Russell was born in London when his mother, from Sudbury, Ont., was attending Fanshawe College.

He moved to his father’s hometown of St. Louis, MO where he discovered skateboarding by chance.

“I found a skateboard inside of a bush,” says Russell. “I was a little kid doing some bush diving and I pulled out a skateboard. In St. Louis about 16 years ago, it wasn’t so popular. My dad's only seen two skateboards in his life. One from a childhood friend, and then the other one that I brought out of a bush.”

At the age of eight, he started to dream big, and convinced his parents to uproot and move to Carlsbad, California, home to some of the world’s best skateboarders.

From there, he continued to progress, and 11 years later, he’s in Paris at the 2024 games.

“I thought if I ever have an opportunity to ever go to the, Olympics, I want to represent the motherland [Canada] which is literally my mother's land,” says Russell. “The barriers to entry for Canada compared to the U.S. team was a lot more applicable to my situation.”

Olympic Street Skating involves rails, stairs, and ledges. It is unlike Park which is done inside a bowl.

“We're in the LA Concorde area and the venue is beautiful,” he says. “It's going to be an amazing event and we're going to show up and show out. It's about 6,000 seats, and the more cheers, the more hype, the better, because that pushes us to do what we were all made to do, just to show off and to do tricks that no one has ever seen before.

His goal is the podium, and with his size and power, he is pulling off moves others cannot.

“I want people to see my authentic skateboarding, and I want people to see and feel the tricks I do,” says Russell.