yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Landing the 900: The moment Tony Hawk became a legend | Rewind the '90s


2m read
·Nov 10, 2024

NARRATOR: In 1995, Tony Hawk wins gold in the first X Games and goes on to dominate the decade. In 1999 he cranks it up a notch, attempting a never before done trick, the 900.

HAWK: A 900 is a two and a half spin rotation sort of summersault in the air, holding onto your skateboard. The thing that makes it the most challenging is that you are blind to your landing zone twice.

DUNCAN (over speaker): Yeah, 900!

HAWK: I had no plans of doing 900 at X Games. I think it was the onsite announcer, Dave Duncan that said, "Oh let's see that 900," 'cause he knew I'd been trying it.

DUNCAN (over speaker): Run back, Tony's got a shot at it. Can he do it?

HAWK: And so I just started trying it more to appease the crowd and to appease Dave on the mic, like, here's what it looks like.

DUNCAN (over speaker): 900! 900, this could be it. Oh. The closest one. (cheering) We're not worthy.

SEMIAO: When he'd go up and start flipping it was like... (gasps). (sighs).

HAWK: Something inside me just said, "You're either making this or they're gonna cart you off of the ramp to the hospital," those were the only two endings to that night for me.

DUNCAN (over speaker): Tony, Tony, Tony, Tony, Tony, history in the making.

SEMIAO: The 900 was revolutionary 'cause it had never been done before. My heart was in mouth. I didn't want him to be taken away in an ambulance, I wanted him to land it.

HAWK: At one point I thought it wasn't possible and it was just like, I wasn't gonna give up. (cheering)

SEMIAO: And when he did it, that pure shock.

HAWK: When I made it, I saw all my peers rushing towards me and it was like that, that made it real.

SEMIAO: And that's how you achieve legendary status. It was big for the X Games, it was big for Tony Hawk, it was big for skateboarding, like today we'd say, "It went viral," you know, and, and that was, was really a seminal moment. (cheering)

DUNCAN (over speaker): What you got to say? How do you feel right now?

HAWK (over speaker): If it weren't for you people, I would have never made that, I swear to God. (cheering)

More Articles

View All
Warren Buffett: How To Achieve A 20% Return Per Year
The first role in investment is don’t lose, and the second rule of investment is don’t forget the first rule. And that’s all the rules there are. I mean, that if you buy things for far below what they’re worth and you buy a group of them, you basically do…
Read What You Love Until You Love to Read
Before we go and talk about accountability and leverage and judgment, you’ve got a few tweets further down the line that I would put in the category of continuous learning. They’re essentially: there is no skill called business. Avoid business magazines …
Seasons | The Earth-sun-moon system | Middle school Earth and space science | Khan Academy
In this video, we’re gonna think about why we have seasons on Earth like summer and fall and winter and spring. Now, one theory that some folks might have is maybe it’s due to the distance between the Earth and the Sun. We know that the Earth orbits the S…
Meeting a Black-Market Marijuana Dealer | Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller
[Music] One of the big players in that world, someone I’m told moves more than a million dollars worth of product daily, has agreed to meet me. Well, kind of. Okay, we ready? So I’m currently in an empty room and in front of a table with nine pounds of a…
Why NASA's Cassini Mission Was Important
What you’re looking at is the newest and currently last picture that humanity has of the gas giant Saturn. September 15, 2017, marked the end of an era for NASA and space exploration as a whole. At 7:55 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on that morning, the Cass…
Sales pre-PMF should be done by the founders.
If you’re the founder of an early stage startup and you’re building a product that you’re hoping other businesses will buy, you are capable of selling it. That’s the good news. The bad news is that you’re probably the only person capable of selling your p…