Tony Hawk is 53 years old. He’s broken countless bones over the course of his career; fought through injuries that very easily could have ended it. And on March 7, he suffered one of the worst of them: a broken femur.
According to reports, he was attempting a McTwist when the accident happened. “I hit the wall sooner than expected in a half-squat position and it sent me straight to the flat onto my knees,” Hawk said. “The force of my body position upon impact broke my front leg as I came sliding to a stop.”
He shared an x-ray image of the broken bone, and it’s an incredibly bad break. “Yesterday sucked,” he wrote. “I broke my elbow 20 years ago and managed to make a full comeback; this recovery for a broken femur will be much harder because of its severity (and my age). But I’m up for the challenge.”
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The broken bone is a little ironic, given the fact that it happened on the very same night that HBO released the trailer for his upcoming film, Until The Wheels Fall Off. According to Hawk, the film “has a strong focus on the philosophy of how I/we do this at our age.”
He’s said many times that he won’t stop skating until he’s physically incapable of it — and his most recent injury certainly puts him a little closer to that. Not all the way there, though. “I’ll be back,” he continued. “Maybe not at full capacity but I resigned to that notion years ago as I approached ‘mid-life.'”
He recently sat down with legendary skateboarder and his good friend Jason Ellis to talk about what happened and how it’s going to affect the rest of his life.
