Click here for updates on this story

ROYAL OAK, Mich. (WXYZ) — Athletes from around the world are coming to Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympics.

It’s the second time skateboarding has been included in the sporting events, and one of those athletes calls Metro Detroit home.

Nick Mullins is an adaptive skateboarder. He was invited to test the skateboard course in a demonstration skate. Grind rails, ramps and stairs are not the only obstacles Nick has to deal with while skating, he is also completely blind.

Nick says he’s had a skateboard on the bottom of his shoes since he was 10. He says a skateboarding injury at 18 left him without his sight and he hopes his journey to the Paris Games will be a vision for others to get back up after the worst falls.

“I’m really looking forward to the track,” said Nick Mullins.

7 News Detroit caught up with Nick at his home base, Modern Skate and Surf in Royal Oak, a few days before he headed to Paris.

“It’s kind of a jam format where five to 10 people, very skilled people, are flying around the park, showing off their skating skills,” Nick said of the skate. He added, “It’s for adaptive skateboarding. We’re trying to get adaptive skateboarding into the Olympics.”

Nick will picture that Olympic skateboarding rink in his mind. When he was 18, Nick fell while skateboarding and got skinned. He said he didn’t think about it at the time. The skinned slits led to Nick getting a MRSA staph infection, which put him in a medically induced coma for a month and a half. Nick had a 1% chance of waking up.

“It ended up ripping my retinas off the back of my eyes, like wet wallpaper.” Nick added: “It was enough to think, oh, there’s light in the room. That’s it. Then I went into surgery. They helped replace part of my retina. I remember opening my eyes one day and the light was gone.”

Nick says that after spending weeks in the hospital and losing his vision, he had to relearn how to walk and function in daily life before he could even think about skateboarding.

“It was really hard at first. I was kind of angry at life and angry at God — I just blamed everything,” Nick said.

Nine months after waking up, Nick grabbed an old friend. “Every time I put my foot in grip tape, it’s instant meditation.

The whole world, daily struggles, annoyances, everything just disappears,” Nick said. He continued, “It was a long, hard, hard journey to get where I am now. A lot of tears, a lot of effort.”

Nick adapts by skating with a stick in his hand and listening to the sounds around him.

“The way I see in my head is that I hear everything around me, but my brain creates a kind of 3D world of what’s happening around me in my head,” Nick said.

He even caught the attention of Tony Hawk at a skate event in Salt Lake City. Tony Hawk’s 13ft vert ramp was brought to the event, Nick skated it.

Tony Hawk posted a clip of that run on his Instagram page with the caption: “An inspiring moment at @vertalert practice last night. Nick Mullins came in for this solid three-piece set with a Miller Flip. Nothing special: he’s blind.”

Nick says he will check out the track a few times in Paris to get a feel for the conditions before he sets off on his demo skating tour on July 31.

He says he can’t wait to show the world what adaptive skateboarders can do.

“You don’t really know what you’re capable of until you put your mind to it and try. You can do incredible things if you just go out there and try,” Nick said.

He added: “The only limitation is a bad attitude. That had a big impact on me.”

Please note: This content has a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.