A 13-year-old Olympic skateboarding hopeful from the Gold Coast has made history by becoming the first female athlete to land the holy grail of tricks, a rare 720.
Arisa Trew, ranked 14th in the world and aiming to represent Australia at next year’s Paris Games, landed two mid-air rotations at the Tony Hawk Vert Alert in the US on Sunday.
The manoeuvre was first successfully performed by skating great Hawk himself back in 1985, but until the weekend it had not been landed by a female skater in a competition environment.
Fittingly, Hawk was on hand in Salt Lake City to witness Trew tread in his footsteps and enter the record books.
“I’m so excited to be the first girl to land a 720 in the world,” Trew said. “I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the crowd hyping me up.”
The Australian, who won the women’s final ahead of 16-year-old Asahi Kaihara of Japan and 10-year-old Reese Nelson of Canada, is aiming to make the final selection for the Paris Olympics skateboard park team.
“It really was an amazing thing,” Trew’s coach, Trevor Ward, said. “We’ve worked really hard to get Arisa to this point right now. Just a lot of training, a lot of pain and she came through with the goods on the biggest stage in the world.
“She did the 720 which Tony Hawk did in [1985], that was the first time to do it. And now she is the first woman in the world to do it, which is unbelievable as a 13-year-old.”
While a 720 is still rare, it is not the most difficult of tricks. There is a 900-degree backside spin in the air – again first landed by Hawk in 1999 – while a 1,080-degree backside or frontside in the air – three full rotations – was landed for the first time by a 12-year-old Tom Schaar in 2012.
Mitchie Brusco pushed boundaries even further in 2019 when he landed a three-revolution 1,260-degree trick for the first time in history.
