On a Monday in a private Vista halfpipe, Tony Hawk landed the 900 again at age 48 — exactly 17 years to the day after he first completed the trick and changed skateboarding forever. He has since said he will never attempt another.
A quiet session, a familiar rotation
The session was indoors and private, with only a small crew watching. Hawk made a few failed attempts before snapping the board through two and a half rotations and riding away clean to applause.
His son Spencer, who was born the same year as the first 900, stood by again. "Spencer was there at my first one," Hawk said in the video he released that day. "Now he's at my last."
Seventeen years, two bookends
The first 900 came on his eleventh try of the night at X Games Five in San Francisco, after the Best Trick clock had already expired. He had failed hundreds of times in the years prior.
In 2003 he landed it again inside competition time, with seven seconds on the clock, to win vert best trick gold at his final regular X Games. Between those moments lay twelve consecutive NSA vert championships and an induction into the inaugural class of the Skateboarding Hall of Fame.
He spoke about the 2016 landing with no longing for a third. "I'm thankful for it," he told journalist Farran Golding. "I'm proud that I got to do it again. It tied a nice bow on it for me."
The wheels kept rolling, but the trick that once seemed impossible was closed for good.
