First Ever 1080° Landed by Tom Schaar

Lo scorso weekend un altro primato assoluto nel mondo skateboarding è stato raggiunto: il 12enne Tom Schaar ha chiuso per la prima volta nella storia un 1080.

Tre giri completi su se stesso per un guinness dei primati che va dritto dritto negli annali, battendo così il precedente traguardo del 900, realizzato per la prima volta da Tony Hawk nel 1999.

For years the holy grail of all skateboard tricks, the 1080, has eluded the biggest and most talented stars in skateboarding. While many have tried, it was never landed — that is until now.

From the most unlikely of places, it was not a super star skateboarder that made the historic first, but a twelve-year-old skate prodigy from Malibu, California, named Tom Schaar.

As Tom’s extraordinary talent became evident, during the eight short years he’s been skating, it seemed like he might have the 1080 in his grip. The one problem? The MegaRamp used for practice at the Woodward West camp provides some of the speed and velocity needed, but the 50-foot gap in the ramp hindered Tom’s ability to keep that momentum going all the way through to the quarter pipe to land the trick successfully.

By teaming up with Red Bull, they were able to bridge the gap (literally) by creating a custom built roll-over feature, allowing Tom to drop in on the 70-foot-tall MegaRamp and roll right over the giant gap. As a result, Tom was able to maintain his speed and his run resulted in the first-ever successfully landed 1080 (three complete spins) on the 27-foot-tall quarter pipe.

Certo, un pomeriggio tranquillo alla MegaRamp non è senz’altro la finale degli X-Games dove mr. Hawk chiuse per la prima volta il 900, ma per la cronaca poco conta: un dodicenne ha stabilito il nuovo record di rotazioni in aria su tavola da skateboard.

Photography: Transworld Business