11-year-old skateboarder lands record-breaking 1080


11-year-old skateboarder lands record-breaking 1080

By Andrew Downie | Reuters

Eleven-year-old skateboard prodigy Gui Khury became the first person to land a 1080-degree turn on a vertical ramp.

More than two decades after Tony Hawk completed the first 900-degree turn, Khury shattered a long-standing record Friday by flying off the top of a ramp and completing three full spins in the air before landing cleanly. The maneuver has long been one of the holy grails of skateboarding.

“1080!!!I have no words to explain what just happened…, ” reads the caption on the video posted on his Instagram account.

His father, Ricardo Khury Filho, said the coronavirus shutdown was a contributing factor in his son’s feat.

“He had a life that was about school, and he didn’t have a lot of time to train. When he got home from school he was tired,” Khury Filho told Reuters. “So now he is at home more, he eats better, and he has more time to train. …

“If he didn’t have (the skate facilities) … he would be stuck at home like everyone else and unable to do sport. So the isolation helped him focus.”

During lockdown, Khury’s family has been making the 20-minute trip most days to his grandmother’s house to deliver food and drop him off so that he can train on the vertical ramp, bowl and street course they had built on her property.

He was already the youngest skateboarder to complete the 900-degree turn, a feat he pulled off at age 8.

“I was like, oh my God, what did I just do?” Gui Khury told Reuters on Sunday, two days after achieving his historic 1080.

In the video, two other skaters on the ramp cheer and throw their boards down when he completes the feat.

The boy’s celebration was “mac and cheese at home” with his family.

Hawk, a Southern Californian, landed the first 900 in 1999, when he was 31. He called it the biggest moment of his competitive career.

American Tom Schaar completed a 1080-degree turn in 2012 but on a mega ramp that gives skateboarders a higher speed and elevation in which to complete all three turns.

Khury’s triple spin was recorded by his parents from two angles on their phones and posted on Instagram.

“I sent it to all my favorite skaters, like Tony Hawk, Bob Burnquist and Neal Mims,” Gui Khury said from his home in Curitiba, in southern Brazil.

“Some posted it on their stories and some actually posted it on their Instagram. I was like that’s so crazy, because it’s like a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“It’s so amazing. It’s the best feeling ever.”

The skater’s next task is to keep practicing the 1080-degree turn so he can complete the trick in competitions.

Then, with the confidence that perhaps only an 11-year old can pass off, he imagines attempting skateboarding’s next big milestone: “1260. One person has done it only but it was on a mega ramp so it will be way (more) difficult for me,” the boy said.

Skateboarding is set to make its Olympic debut at the Tokyo Olympics, which have been pushed back to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Khury’s fellow Brazilian Leticia Bufoni, 26, is a favorite to win a medal in the women’s competition.




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