Tony Hawk says he got bullied even after becoming a pro skateboarder
Ali Condon
Featured Image Credit: YouTube/The Diary of a CEO/Sipa US / Alamy Stock Photo
Tony Hawk is arguably one of the coolest guys in the world, so it's pretty shocking to learn that he was bullied in school.
Even after he turned pro, Tony was an outcast an high school, but thankfully he kept the sport up.
The thing is, skateboarding wasn't always the gnarly, multi-billion dollar sport it is today. In fact, it used to be pretty uncool.
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But, as a teenager, Tony was obsessed with skateboarding, and was determined to keep it up no matter what.
"I was a smaller kid I got picked on a lot, bullied, and I didn't excel that much in team sports," he told The Diary of a CEO podcast.
"When I found skating, every time I'd go skate, I'd get better at it.
"It was incremental, almost immeasurable, but I knew each time I was improving and I couldn't say that about any of the other sports I was doing."
It all seems a little hard to believe.
"I chose to hide my skateboard in the bushes in the school because I would get hassled carrying it around, even though I was starting to find some sense of success with it," he continued.
"I was actually at that point sponsored. I had a company that was giving me boards, that was sending me to events.
"Even when I turned pro, it was just not cool. I would leave high school for a big skate event... I'm signing autographs and then I would come back from that weekend and be a ghost in the hallways again."
Still, Tony stuck with his passion, determined to prove his haters wrong. And it's safe to say he had some success in that department.
"I just wanted to see skateboarding get more popular, but I got famous by accident. Suddenly, I was the chosen ambassador. I was making an income. I owned a house. In my last year of high school, I was doing talk shows and I was doing big appearances."
Today, Tony Hawk is one of the most famous athletes in the world, his video game franchise is worth $1.4 billion, and skateboarding became a well-respected sport, even making its way into the Olympics in 2020.
But Tony's career wasn't always on the up and up.
"The trajectory just seemed like it was never going to end, and then it dropped very quickly," he told host Steven Bartlett.
"But I was so hyper-fixated on my skating, I didn't really work on my humanity.
"I was a machine and I'd go and do the event and win the trophy and go home... Didn't allow me to be myself very much"