introduction tony tony Hawk had already failed seven times when he stood on top of the vert at the fifth annual X Games in 1999 He was trying to land a 900 a two and-a-half rotation spin in the Vert Best Trick contest He’d fallen off his board time and again each attempt could have led to a career-ending injury But on the eighth attempt his last Hawk skated up each side of the ramp once before spinning into action and landing on his board with a deep knee bend at the end of the trick Jono Schwan another pro skateboarder described the feat to ESPN com in 2014 The reason Tony’s 900 was so incredible was that most thought it was impossible to do like getting a man to the moon Perhaps the most influential trick in modern skateboarding Hawk’s 900 inspired a generation of skateboarders Pro skate boarder Tom Schaar was born the year Hawk landed the 900 In 2011 Schaar became the youngest skater ever to land the trick He saw Hawk’s trick on a video and told ESPN com It inspired me to skate vert instead of street It kind of launched my whole skat ing career In 2012 at age twelve Schaar became the first skateboarder to land a 1080 4
INTRODUCTION Tony Hawk is one of the best-known skaters in the world for a reason He’s mastered innovative tricks There’s no keeping up with the progress of skateboarding tricks today because they can happen anywhere While pros are competing for big purses a kid with a hand-me-down skate board can be trying a daring new trick at a local skate park That’s one of the most extreme parts of skateboarding it’s possible for anyone to try And that means anyone can try for the impossible too It’s this outlook that led Hawk to the top of the sport in 1999 and what will take others there in years to come
one chapter A HISTORY OF UPS AND DOWNS the the very first skateboards hit the streets in the early twen tieth century They were homemade usually just boards with roller-skate wheels attached to the bottom and a crate attached to the top for handles It looked somewhat like a crude scooter However skateboards as they’re known today came about in California during the 1950s Many surfers began surfing the streets on homemade boards around roughly the same time In fact it’s not known who first came up with the idea Again wooden boards with roller-skate wheels were common The first skateboard was sold commercially in 1959 By 1963 the sport was so popular that skate boarders started competing in the first skateboarding competitions Since the 1960s skateboards have been available for anyone to buy 6
A HISTORY OF UPS AND DOWNS 7 Nothing like the trick-heavy competitions of today these early com petitions included downhill races and a freestyle event However just two years later the sport’s popularity came to a screeching halt Some of this had to do with the incredible number of injuries among ama teur skateboarders Safety concerns were raised about the clay wheels then manufactured for commercial skateboards The wheels would break if they hit the ground too hard and were generally hard to control The growing skateboarding companies closed and the whole phenomenon was written off as simply a fad None of the extreme tricks daring skateboarders attempt today would have become possible without the invention of urethane skate board wheels In 1972 Cadillac Wheels came out with the first of these reigniting interest in skateboarding The new wheels were the start of the upswing in the popularity of skateboarding in the 1970s The first skate park was built in 1976 in Florida followed by a slew of others all around the world As more were built skateboard ers suddenly had a dedicated space to practice their craft but these early skate parks played a very small role in the growth of the action sport skate boarding has become In fact the high insur ance costs of these parks led mainstream skateboarding into another slump With the first skate parks came the first places specially reserved for skaters to perfect their craft
