2024 Paris Olympics: Céline Dion, boat parade and more highlights from the opening ceremony

It’s the excited whisper of what has to be one of the luckiest little skateboard aficionados in all of Paris, a little boy who cruised through the small Skate Park Léon Cladel on a penny board and zoomed right past U.S. skateboarder Nyjah Huston, who was sitting next to some friends.

“Nice, but you need a real board,” Huston laughs, and the kid, in shock, quickly disappears.

Soon, Olympic bronze medalist Jagger Eaton and the legendary Chris Joslin pull up on their boards to the skate park tucked in between the Rue Montmarte and Rue Rèaumur.

Over the next hour, the air filled with the sounds of Parisian street life mixing with the grinding of trucks on rails, the momentary silence of catching air, the violent crack of wheels snapping back down onto concrete.