Back in early March, Tony Hawk broke his femur. As you might imagine, femurs are generally necessary when it comes to skateboarding, so he was off his wheels for a while. But now he’s back, and it’s his turn to do a kick flip.
“I can’t be sure exactly what happened when I got hurt,” he said. “I did a McTwist, I didn’t have enough speed. I think that I landed on the wall before I was ready. Next thing I know, I’m sliding across the flat bottom with my leg pointing the other direction.”
Despite the fact that Hawk has been through some intensive rehab, a broken femur could be a career-ender. Things don’t heal as well as we age, and he’s no spring chicken anymore. But he’s determined to bounce back. He’s starting small, of course, just doing little ollies over parking blocks every now and then and working his way up from there. A kick flip is the next step, but it requires a whole bunch of weight on his leg.
“When I’m faced with putting all my weight on this leg,” Tony said, “there’s a sense of fear and weakness.”
But Tony has learned to overcome both fear and weakness, and the look on his face when he lands his first kick flip after his injury is the same as the look on a kid’s face after they land their first one ever.
