Tony Hawk shuts down online troll who cracked homophobic joke about him wearing a helmet while skateboarding
Legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk didn't bother to hide his annoyance when an internet troll called him "gay" for wearing a helmet in an old video.
The troll, commenting on the video Hawk had posted of himself at a 1991 skateboarding event, wrote: "Imagine being gay enough to wear a helmet while skateboarding."
The 51-year-old Hawk was quick to respond with a sarcastic put down of his own. "Imagine it being mandatory when you were young, and then imagine skating into your 50s without a TBI… or being homophobic. Oh wait, you can't," he wrote.
In the Instagram caption for the video, Hawk had told his fans that the video captured his final three runs at the Pow-Wow at Powell competition in 1991. "Fun facts: this was my last event before starting @birdhouseskateboards a few months later," Hawk wrote.
He added, "My deck shape was symmetrical so I didn't have a designated nose or tail, and my trucks felt the same either way. Impossible to nose was a happy accident; I was supposed to land on my truck. Vert tricks in street contests were totally normal."
Hawk became a popular sports icon during the late 1990s and early 2000s. His claim to fame was the 'Holy Grail' "900" feat, a skateboarding trick where the player has to complete two-and-a-half mid-air revolutions (900 degrees) on a skateboard and land perfectly on both feet.
He was the first skateboarder to do so in the history of the sport at the San Francisco X Games on June 27, 1999. After achieving this milestone, Hawk experienced sudden stardom with licensed video games and numerous appearances in other media.
Twenty years have passed and Hawk has fallen into relative obscurity since then with most people not recognizing him as the iconic skateboarder.
"I've actually had people say 'Oh, like Tony Hawk, like the skateboarder guy'. I said, 'Yeah, exactly like that', and they say 'Oh, I wonder what he's up to these days'. My answer to them is, 'He’s up to this', and they still… It doesn't register," he said.
It was just last week that Tony Hawk lost his mother, who died on Christmas Eve after a decade-long battle with Alzheimer's and dementia. The retired professional skateboarder also wrote a touching tribute on Instagram honoring his 94-year-old mother, Nancy.
