I'm not massively into the skate scene but even I can remember watching the x games as a kid and thinking.....but those other guys seemed so much better than tony hawk how did he win? I might be wrong but I see the same kinda thing happening with shaun white whenever I catch any stuff on tv. like I said I'm not an avid follower anyway loved the film.
shareHawk helped progress the sport quickly when he was young. The beef some skaters have with Hawk has more do with Hawk being successful at prolonging his career.
Be it skateboarding or any other extreme sport, when your career spans over multiple generations of other participants coming and going, it's hard to evolve as the sport does. But Hawk knew how to play the judges, scoring system, competitions, was strategic, TV ratings for non-skate fans, gave the sponsors what they wanted, etc - especially during the second half of his career.
You can't deny he was not a smart man understanding the business and where the cash came from that made it all go round.
It's easy to say people like that "aren't pure skaters" that just give it everything, anywhere, and always want to try new things for the pure love, but the truth is without guys like that creating exposure to general public, sport doesn't grow.
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When logic and science aren't on your side, you always lose.
Hrmm ... I agree with what you write to an extent but with the Tas and Bens of the world skateboarding would become an empty corporate affair. I'm not a skateboarder and realise the film has a bias but Tony Hawk was a boring skater in comparison to Tas. It was the latter's craziness that gave him the edge. Hawk was slick, Tas was burning.
A bird sings and the mountain's silence deepens.share
I'm not going to disagree that Pappas' in their [very short] prime may have been better than Hawk was; I'm just suggesting most 'action' sports need a combination of both types of people (including guys like Hawk) to survive... TV coverage, sponsors, appealing to little kids, getting skateparks into neighborhoods, changing image of skaters as 'bad boys', etc.
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When logic and science aren't on your side, you always lose.
Awesome when someone talks *beep* about what they don't know. Stick to mountain bikes nancy.
shareI lost respect for Hawk after seeing this!
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