Tony Hawk

My way of overcoming fear was visualizing the successful outcome.

Always.

It didn't always work.

But in terms of, for instance, jumping a building, I'm going to get over it.

I may not make it.

But I'm getting over that gap no matter what.

Or something with the loop or the 900.

It was like, I'm going to get close enough to this that I can feel confident in trying to land it.

uh hundreds i don't know about thousands because it's such a violent uh crash when you when you try to make it and you don't that you only get maybe five real good attempts when you're trying to learn it before your body just says no more so um through the years of

1994 to 1997, I would go through phases of trying it, but I would only get maybe 20 attempts in a session because then I'm just beat up.

When I, when I,

I always knew, I always felt like it was possible.

And then when all the pieces came together that I thought, I thought I had the pieces of the puzzle and I broke my rib, that really set me back because I was like, that was the moment.

I had everything I needed and it didn't work.

I don't know what I did wrong.

I mean, I obviously know what I did wrong in leaning too far forward, but I don't know if I have it in me to get to that point again.

And so,

When the X Games, the 99 X Games came along, I had tried it a few times since then and got somewhat close, but I didn't really have the drive or the desire to try to set it down again because of what had happened to me.

And so when I got to X Games, the best trick event, I was not going to try that because that was not my best trick.

I'd never done that trick.