Olympics 2021: Tony Hawk on how skateboarding, once a ‘misfit activity,’ could be highlight of Summer Games

During the greater part of its history, skateboarding has been a market sport. In 1970s California it was at first seen as a very simple alternative action to surfing. But around the decades, skateboarding skyrocketed in level of popularity and grew to become popular during the United States and other areas of the globe. In the late nineties and early 2000s, the X Video games aided skateboarding blossom into the mainstream.

Several young ones also begun picking up skateboarding when the initial installment of the well-known movie sport series, “Tony Hawk’s Professional Skater,” was introduced in 1999. That game’s legacy is so loaded that a remake for present day-day consoles hit suppliers previous tumble.

Now, decades soon after remaining seen as rather of an underground sport, skateboarding will be acknowledged as an Olympic sport for the initial time at the Tokyo Olympics, which get started on July 23. Skateboarding legend Tony Hawk is thrilled that the sport is eventually remaining rewarded with an global stage like the Olympics.

“I think it is exciting. I think it is a testament to all of the skaters’ perseverance by means of the decades and how it has grow to be validated in the eyes of young ones and mainstream media,” Hawk informed CBS Sports. “To see it included to an establishment like the Olympics, it exhibits that we’re here to continue to be. We have been for a extended time, but there have been some expanding pains along the way.”

Avenue and park occasions will be highlighted through the Olympics. In street occasions, skaters execute a vast array of methods that utilize commonplace outdoor items, these types of as benches, rails, ramps, and even stairs. The street competitiveness will consist of two forty five-next runs and 5 single-trick attempts. The leading four of the seven scores are included with each other in order to identify the ultimate total rating for just about every skater.

In the meantime, park occasions are programs that admirers may well be a lot more accustomed to. Skaters will execute methods in a bowl of sorts and can journey from side-to-side in order to execute methods that will get a ton of air. There will be three forty five-next runs in which skaters will compete to land the ideal methods and their maximum-scoring operate will be made use of as their formal rating.

“I think it will be a single of the highlights of the Video games,” Hawk claimed of skateboarding’s inclusion at the Tokyo Olympics. “I think it will encourage young ones who perhaps have under no circumstances observed or have been curious to attempt it to go and get skateboards. It will invigorate skateboarding into new international locations who perhaps under no circumstances embraced it.”

Hawk is familiar with a thing of two about encouraging people today embrace the sport. He is quickly the most important star in the history of skateboarding and set the sport on the map. The California native has earned 10 gold medals in the X Video games around the decades and grew to become the initial skateboarder to land a 900, which he did did through the 1999 X Video games.

To him, skateboarding has the opportunity to increase exponentially in the same way that snowboarding went from remaining “a counter lifestyle or misfit action” to a spotlight of the Wintertime Olympics. But hunting back again on it, it is all nevertheless a minimal challenging for Hawk to fathom that skateboarding is where it is at now.

“I think that young ones will pick out to skate as quickly as they pick out to engage in baseball now in their youth,” Hawk claimed. “When I was a child, that was not the case at all. With the new technology, it is not a shock that you would see it on a massive stage. But to our technology, it is nevertheless one thing that felt unlikely since it was not appreciated on that stage. Now when we see it there, that’s incredible.”