The Groundbreaker: Tony Hawk

Tony Hawk: For me the best part was just the opportunity to get the whole team together in one place. It’s actually rare that we’re all together for a project like that.

Honestly, I’m a big proponent of technological progress, so I’d say everything is better now. My phone is my follow cam now. I mean, if you were to airdrop something to my iPhone you’d see it’s called Tony’s DeathLens.

In general, I’ve always had an appreciation of skaters who are well rounded. But now I’m putting more weight on bringing on talented transition skaters.

Yeah, he was on the team for a long time, but I thought it was cool he got asked to join the Baker team. He has free will—he can do what he wants. My biggest reaction was just thinking it was so cool that [team founder] Andrew Reynolds wanted him on his team based on his merits.

Two things come to mind. The first is that there’s a much stronger international presence. I’m thinking of places like Africa and parts of Asia, where I didn’t imagine skate culture could exist, where suddenly there are programs and really good skaters. And beyond that, now there’s a deeper appreciation in the public for the talent. Not that long ago, many people thought skating was just a novelty, while now, thanks to the Olympics, people have a clearer perception of how athletic it can be.

I keep pushing as hard as possible. It’s not like I’m on some committee with the Games. I’m just advocating as best as I can. I think the most powerful thing I can do is keep putting on vert events. I’m trying to make vert skating hard to ignore.

There is a generation of skaters who grew up playing the game. A lot of them played Pro Skater and thought that some of the combos that were in the game, which we put in there as a sort of fantasy, were possible. I’ve met a lot of skaters who say the game helped get them interested to try the real thing.

It all started from me being able to have a place to skate in my formative years. Back then I didn’t realize how lucky I was. Young skaters need community and a place to gather. So when I realized I had the power to effect change, that was a priority—to give more people a place to skate. It has taken work. For a long time, cities needed to be convinced that a skatepark would be a positive contribution to their community and not a scary place where undesirable people would hang out. I go to skateparks all over the world and what I see are people of all ages, sexes, races and skill levels hanging out—and everyone there is being supportive of everyone else. There’s no other sport that’s like that. Now any city that doesn’t have a skatepark is open to it.

I’m as recovered as I expect to be. It’s made me appreciate the joys of skating in a new way and also to not keep chasing high- impact moves like I did for decades. I was living in denial that I could keep skating like that, and that idea came crashing down quite literally. I have a deeper appreciation of being able to do basic tricks now.