Cordano Russell has become a global phenomenon, with the London, Ontario-born skateboarder going from relative unknown to Canada’s top street skater over the past year.

Now he will participate in the Olympic Games in Paris on Saturday.

At 6’1” and 220 pounds, Russell is hard to miss. His size and athleticism had him on track for a D1 Football Scholarship and potentially a professional career as an elite defender, but he gave that up to pursue his passion in a sport that can be a very physical one.

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

“It’s something you learn quickly,” says Russell, 19. “You know you’re going to fall a lot more times than you want to land a trick in skateboarding. I was never afraid to get dirty. I was always the young kid who would jump off the marble table or the couch and just laugh it off.”

Russell was born in London while his mother, originally from Sudbury, Ontario, attended Fanshawe College.

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

“I found a skateboard in a bush,” Russell says. “I was a little kid bush diving and I pulled out a skateboard. In St. Louis, it wasn’t that popular about 16 years ago. My dad only saw two skateboards in his life. One belonged to a childhood friend and the other one I pulled out of a bush.”

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

From then on he continued to develop and 11 years later he is in Paris for the 2024 Games.

“I thought if I ever got the chance to go to the Olympics, I wanted to represent the motherland (Canada), which is literally my mother’s country,” Russell said. “The barriers to entry for Canada versus the U.S. team were much more applicable to my situation.”

Olympic Street Skating involves rails, stairs and ledges. It is different from Park, which is done in a bowl.

“We’re in the LA Concorde area and the venue is beautiful,” he says. “It’s going to be a great event and we’re going to show up and show what we can do. There’s about 6,000 seats and the more cheers, the more hype, the better because it forces us to do what we’re all made to do, which is just show what we can do and do tricks that no one’s ever seen before.

His goal is the stage, and with his size and strength he can achieve things others cannot.

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