WHY TONY HAWK DIDN’T DO A 900 IN HIS 50TH BIRTHDAY PART

Courtesy of Rolling Stone

During the run-up to his 50 tricks at 50 part that dropped last weekend, Tony Hawk sat down for a candid interview with Newsweek. The piece reveals a couple of interesting points about the video that you wouldn’t know from just watching it. First and foremost, all of the tricks done in the edit were actually invented by Hawk over the last 40 years.

You’ve caught me in a crazy week because I’m trying to finish this video that’s going to be released on my birthday, so I’ve been skating every single day trying to finish this. I was trying to document 50 tricks I’ve created over the last four decades of skating.

But if it’s not crunch time like now, I’m probably skating at least three or four times a week for a couple of hours.

Given the direction taken, the 900—which Tony did a couple of years ago at age 48—is obviously missing from this section. It is, perhaps, the most famous trick that Hawk has invented of all time. He goes on to explain why he chose to leave it out later in the interview.

For this particular video, I purposefully didn’t do it. Because I didn’t want that to be the focus of it. I’m trying to hopefully rest on my prior accolades.

I guess it’s like I can’t swallow my pride on that. I’d rather—I’m hoping people recognize that I had more to contribute.

For more on Tony, head over to Newsweek to read the entire piece.