Ten tricks blew a contest apart — only one really changed skateboarding

On February 15, 2026, at the Ken Rosewall Arena in Sydney, over 10,000 people witnessed something the Street League had never seen since its creation in 2010. Ginwoo Onodera, a 16-year-old Japanese dude, pulled off seven attempts that night. Seven scores: 9.1 — 9.4 — 9.1 — 9.2 — 9.5 — 9.0 — 9.2. Not a single one below 9. Final score: 37.3. Julian Agliardi came in at 35.5, Giovanni Vianna at 34.7. Perfection graded live, one February night.

But here’s the thing. In ten years, this night probably won’t be the one people reference when they talk about the trick contest that changed everything. We ranked ten—from wildest to most game-changing, from 1983 to this February 2026. Only one actually moved skateboarding outside skateboarding. It’s not the fastest, and the answer’s at the end.

June 27, 1999: ten falls, clock already at zero

X Games V, San Francisco, Best Trick on the vert ramp. The format had a time limit. Time’s been up for a while, and nobody’s stopping: judges keep rolling, other riders stay on the platform, the crowd doesn’t move.

Tony Hawk tries his two-and-a-half spins. He falls. Gets back up. Falls again. Twice, he crashes back onto the board and it takes off on its own. Ten failed attempts before the eleventh sticks, arms windmilling, one hand brushing the vert’s concrete edge. That night, the first 900 in history went down under a live camera.

Tony Hawk goes for two and a half rotations. He slams. He climbs back. He slams again. Twice he lands on the board and it shoots out from under him. Ten failed attempts before the eleventh sticks, arms windmilling, one hand grazing the ramp. That night, the first 900 in history lands in front of a rolling camera.

Ten falls in front of everyone, live, outside the clock. That’s what history remembers—not the trick. — What the 900 really sold

Before Hawk: 34 contests won out of 35, and no one filming

Rewind. In 1980, a fourteen-year-old enters the Oasis Pro and beats the reigning world champion. His name is Rodney Mullen. Over the following decade he wins 34 of the 35 freestyle contests he enters. The kind of streak no sport sees twice.

Except freestyle happens on flat ground, in front of two hundred people, with no grandstand and no broadcast. Zero spectacle in the television sense. What comes out of those contests, though, is the alphabet: kickflip and heelflip in 1982, 360 flip in 1983. Every trick you see on a rail today descends from figures landed on flat asphalt in front of a jury in polo shirts.

That’s the paradox of this ranking: the technically most important trick is never the one that makes an arena scream.

1080, 1260: the rotation race, and what it cost

On 8 May 2020, Gui Khury lands the first 1080 on a vert ramp. He is eleven, he is at home in Curitiba, there is no contest — just his ramp and a camera. Fourteen months later, on 16 July 2021, he does it again in X Games Best Trick: the first 1080 in competition, and at twelve he becomes the youngest gold medallist in X Games history.

Two years earlier, in August 2019, Mitchie Brusco had sent the first 1260 in Big Air, aged twenty-two. Three and a half rotations. On paper, harder than the 900. In people’s memories, it weighs far less — and that is exactly the point of this article.

Arisa Trew, Sky Brown: the bar moved on the other side

On 23 June 2023, at Vert Alert in Salt Lake City, Arisa Trew becomes the first woman to land a 720 in competition. She is thirteen. On 29 May 2024 she puts down the 900 — first woman, twenty-five years after Hawk. That August she takes park gold at the Paris Games and becomes Australia’s youngest Olympic champion, at fourteen.

On the same Paris podium, Sky Brown takes bronze. Two years earlier she had already made the « can girls do it » question completely obsolete. Nobody asks it anymore. That may be the real shift of the decade, and it doesn’t fit inside a single trick.

The ten, in order — and the detail that stings

Here is the ranking, from most spectacular to most foundational. One: Tony Hawk‘s 900 at the 1999 X Games. Two: Mitchie Brusco’s 1260 in Big Air, August 2019. Three: Gui Khury’s 1080 in X Games Best Trick 2021, at twelve. Four: Arisa Trew’s 900 on 29 May 2024, the first by a woman. Five: her 720 at Vert Alert 2023. Six: Ginwoo Onodera’s 9.5 in Sydney, the highest single score of his record night. Seven and eight: the 900s of Ema Kawakami at seven, in August 2022, and Asher Bradshaw at ten, in May 2014 — landed outside competition, and that’s precisely what stings. Nine: Sandro Dias’s 900 in May 2004, five years after Hawk, when the trick was still considered impossible to repeat. Ten: Rodney Mullen‘s 360 flip in 1983, out of a freestyle contest almost nobody watched.

Here’s the sting. Two kids aged seven and ten landed the 900 in their own ramps, quietly, with no audience. The trick that flipped an entire generation has become a skate-school rite of passage. It hasn’t lost its difficulty — it has lost its charge.

A contest trick ain’t judged by how much it costs the rider. It’s judged by how it changes the heads of those who don’t even skate. — The rule they never actually use

The answer: Tony Hawk’s 900, and that’s it

The 900 isn’t the hardest — the 1260 spins one and a half rotations more. It isn’t the most inventive — Mullen wrote the dictionary. It isn’t even the best scored: Ginwoo did better, seven times in a row, last February.

That’s the one whose shockwave went beyond the skatepark. In September 1999, three months after San Francisco, a game called *Hawk* dropped in living rooms and introduced skater lingo to millions of kids who’d never even seen a board up close. Brands followed. Networks followed. The contest circuit turned into a TV product, then an Olympic sport. And twenty-seven years later, that board from that night went for 1.15 million bucks — the price of a piece of culture.

Put another way: Ginwoo Onodera’s night in Sydney exists inside a world the 900 built. Without those ten slams filmed off the clock, there is no Street League with 10,000 spectators, no contract, no 9.5 discussed live. That’s what a trick that changes skateboarding looks like: not the one skaters replay among themselves, but the one that brings in people who weren’t there.

What it says about the 2026 season

The current level’s next-level insane. Ginwoo’s got seven tricks at 9+ in one night; in Rio a few months later, Cordano Russell won after a final decided by less than a point. Over in women’s at Sydney, Rayssa Leal took it with 30.1 over Liz Akama and Chloe Covell. We’ve never skated this good in competition.

What’s missing isn’t the skill. It’s that moment when someone tries something no one asked for, off the clock, risking ten fails in front of everyone. That moment doesn’t fit in a scorecard—and it hasn’t happened in a while. If you wanna know where these nights come from, we broke down the five contests that built modern skateboarding : the most pivotal one had no judges, no crowd.

The facts on this list are verifiable: the full chronology of the 900s is out there, and the Sydney record is detailed by Street League. The rest? That’s collective memory—and it’s way more selective than a panel.

What’s your top one—1999’s 900, Brusco’s 1260, or Ginwoo’s Sydney night? Drop it in the comments ↓