Tony Hawk Gets Back Up

If you skateboard, you're going to fall down. A lot.

No one knows this better than Tony Hawk. Perhaps the most well-known skateboarder in the world, Hawk has fallen countless times, in big moments and small, like when he became the first person to ever land a 900 in competition.

The 900 (two-and-a-half mid-air revolutions) took him years of attempts, and officially, 11 tries on the ramp at the 1999 X Games before he made history. But falling is something that happens just about every time you skate, so when we asked Hawk for a handplant at the top of his vert ramp for our cover, he fell then, too.

“It’s a huge part of skateboarding,” Hawk says. “You learn how to fall by default.”

You also learn how to get back up. Even from the really big ones.

“The gnarliest, most traumatic injury I ever had was breaking my femur,” he says. “When it happened, it felt like my leg disconnected from my body because I didn’t have control of it. I panicked and tried to put it back in place. The bone poked through my hip, and I was in such denial I didn’t realize what it was.”

For someone whose list of broken bones is extensive, Hawk didn’t break one until he was 30. “Unless you count teeth. I knocked my teeth out plenty of times before then,” he says. “Knee surgeries, stitches, concussions. The list goes on.”

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So does his list of accomplishments. When Hawk was 14, he declared himself a professional skater by checking the box next to “pro” instead of “amateur” on a competition registration form. “I’m not sure if it mattered, but that’s how I went pro,” he says. “I just checked a different box.” By the time he was 16, Hawk was considered one of the best skaters in the world, and at 25 he had won 73 of the 103 pro contests he had ever entered. (The 30 he didn’t win? He came in second 19 times.)

Hawk has taken home 10 X Games gold medals, three silvers, and three bronze. He is the face of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, one of the best-selling video game franchises in the world, and is credited with inventing over 100 tricks. But it took him until he was 31 years old to land the 900, a trick that to this day only a small number of skaters can successfully complete.

“Learning that trick,” he says, “really beat me up.”

Plenty of other tricks did too. The infamous “gorilla loop” is perhaps the weirdest incident in Hawk’s injury list due to the fact he was dressed as an ape when he attempted a full upside-down loop on a skate ramp. It also takes the cake for the most injuries in a single go: a broken thumb, a fractured skull, and a broken pelvis. And a reminder to always, always wear a helmet. (And beware of monkey suits.)

Gorilla loops and 900s are extreme examples, but to learn a trick—any trick—means hitting the ground. “Getting hurt was just something I was willing to put up with to learn how to skate,” Hawk says. “Not that I enjoyed it, but I was willing to tolerate it to get better. I learned that from my very first injury skateboarding. I didn’t come away from it thinking, Oh no, I came away from it thinking, That’s a lesson learned. To learn that trick I had to be careful and more confident.”

Confidence is key. Learning anything new can shake an athlete’s self-assurance, but the potential for pain is a big part of skateboarding simply because falling down is baked into the cake. And while most falling in the sport doesn’t result in a major medical event, it is part of the rhythm of learning. “Such a huge part of skateboarding is trying something over and over until you land the trick,” says Hawk. “But the fear of getting hurt is worse than actually getting hurt. Fear paralyzes you and keeps you from getting out of your comfort zone.”

When Hawk was learning to skateboard, he never thought about things going wrong. “I always visualized myself completing the trick,” he says. “You have to visualize yourself already completing it. If you’re hesitant or convinced that you might get hurt, that will be the outcome.”

Hawk says he is much more calculated about what he’s willing to perform now. The 900 is long retired, but the difficulty of tricks is still high. So is his vert ramp. At nearly 14 feet, the ramp in Hawk’s office towers over anyone standing at the base. Add his 6' 3" frame to that, and he’s looking down at a significant drop. 

Hawk has a baseline of tricks he’s comfortable with, which he tweaks to push the level of difficulty without putting his body at too big of a risk. But when he attempts a trick, even ones he knows well, he doesn’t land them all. That’s just skateboarding. When Hawk has to bail on a landing, the power and speed behind catching major air at the top of a vert ramp rattles the boards (and his bones).

But to watch him skate is to appreciate one of skateboarding’s most impressive careers, one that has been shaped as much by getting back up as it has by landing the world’s hardest tricks. 

The Next Wave

Hawk’s incredible career—all those falls, all those new tricks—paved the way for a deep field of talent in skateboarding today: Reese Nelson, JD Sanchez, and Ema Kawakami, who landed an incredible 1080 at only 10 years old.

They are all skaters Hawk is excited to watch. So is Australian skater Arisa Trew, the first female skateboarder to land a 900 in competition. “It was amazing to see someone like Arisa do a milestone trick,” he says. “It was such a huge push forward for women’s skating and showing there are truly no boundaries.” Hawk says the 14-year-old Trew can land an even harder trick—a Switch McTwist—an inverted 540 spun backside, all in her reverse stance. 

Hawk says there is always something to learn, some new technique to master. But he knows the most valuable part of skating lies in the simple act of doing it. “If you allow yourself to enjoy the process, skating will teach you life lessons,” he says. “I think that is the most important thing the sport can give you.” 

Hawk still skates several days a week, but, at the age of 56, the Birdman knows his most significant influence on the sport is where he can help take it. “I want to advocate for more skate parks,” he says. Hawk just finished a project introducing four new venues in the Bronx and Brooklyn through his foundation, The Skatepark Project. He also has his eyes on the Olympics, especially since they are coming to Los Angeles in 2028. “I want vert skating in the Olympics,” he says. “It’s something that I feel is a big omission right now.”

After a career of major hits and epic landings, all that injury talk, and a morning of big skating, there was one obvious question to pose: If you could replace one body part, what would it be? Sweaty, but smiling, the skating phenomenon says, “My neck.”