11-year-old skateboarder betters Tony Hawk with first vert 1080

By May 9, 2020, 12:48 PM EDT
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Gui Khury, an 11-year-old Brazilian, became the first skateboarder to land a 1080 on a vert ramp, according to the X Games. The feat came 21 years after Tony Hawk completed the first 900.

Khury posted an Instagram video of the feat on Friday. The legend Hawk reposted it in an Instagram Story with the caption, “But vert isn’t in the Olympics.”

Skateboarding debuts at the Olympics at the Tokyo Games in 2021 with two disciplines: park and street.

There is no vert, the most well known event in the U.S. given Hawk’s prowess in the late 1990s at the dawn of the X Games.

Shaun White also excelled in vert, winning a pair of X Games titles. White, after winning his third Olympic halfpipe snowboarding title in PyeongChang, began a bid to qualify for Tokyo in skateboarding while lamenting that he couldn’t do it in vert.

Instead, he tried park, finishing 13th at the 2019 World Championships. It was impressive given White hadn’t competed on the top level in skateboarding in several years, but not the kind of result that put him in good position to qualify for Tokyo. White announced in late February that he abandoned the Olympic bid.

Other skateboarders have landed a 1080 on a larger, mega ramp, including U.S. Olympic park hopeful Tom Schaar.

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French Open: Ons Jabeur completes Grand Slam quarterfinal set; one U.S. player left

By Jun 5, 2023, 6:56 AM EDT
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No. 7 seed Ons Jabeur of Tunisia dispatched 36th-ranked American Bernarda Pera 6-3, 6-1 in the French Open fourth round, breaking all eight of Pera’s service games.

Jabeur, runner-up at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open last year, has now reached the quarterfinals of all four majors.

Jabeur faces 14th-seeded Brazilian Beatriz Haddad Maia or Spaniard Sara Sorribes Tormo, playing on a protected ranking of 68, in Wednesday’s quarterfinals.

Pera, a 28 year-old born in Croatia, was the oldest U.S. singles player to make the fourth round of a major for the first time since Jill Craybas at 2005 Wimbledon. Her defeat leaves Coco Gauff, the 2022 French Open runner-up, as the lone American singles player left out of the 35 entered in the main draws.

The last American to win a major singles title was Sofia Kenin at the 2020 Australian Open. The 11-major drought matches the longest in history (since 1877) for American men and women combined.

Later Monday, Gauff plays 100th-ranked Slovakian Anna Karolina Schmiedlova. Top seed Iga Swiatek gets 66th-ranked Ukrainian Lesia Tsurenko. The winners of those matches play each other in the quarterfinals.

FRENCH OPEN DRAWS: Women | Men | Broadcast Schedule

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Jim Hines, Olympic 100m gold medalist and first to break 10 seconds, dies

By Jun 5, 2023, 6:06 AM EDT
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Jim Hines, a 1968 Olympic 100m gold medalist and the first person to break 10 seconds in the event, has died at age 76, according to USA Track and Field.

“I understand that God called him home today and we send the prayers up for him,” was posted on the Facebook page of John Carlos, a 1968 U.S. Olympic teammate, over the weekend.

Hines was born in Arkansas, raised in Oakland, California and attended Texas Southern University in Houston.

At the June 1968 AAU Championships in Sacramento, Hines became the first person to break 10 seconds in the 100m with a hand-timed 9.9. It was dubbed the “Night of Speed” because the world record of 10 seconds was beaten by three men and tied by seven others, according to World Athletics.

“There will never be another night like it,” Hines said at a 35th anniversary reunion in 2003, according to World Athletics. “That was the greatest sprinting series in the history of track and field.”

Later that summer, Hines won the Olympic Trials. Then he won the Olympic gold medal in Mexico City’s beneficial thin air in 9.95 seconds, the first electronically timed sub-10 and a world record that stood for 15 years.

Hines was part of a legendary 1968 U.S. Olympic track and field team that also included 200m gold and bronze medalists Tommie Smith and Carlos, plus gold medalists Wyomia Tyus (100m), Bob Beamon (long jump), Al Oerter (discus), Dick Fosbury (high jump), Lee Evans (400m), Madeline Manning Mims (800m), Willie Davenport (110m hurdles), Bob Seagren (pole vault), Randy Matson (shot put), Bill Toomey (decathlon) and the men’s and women’s 4x100m and men’s 4x400m relays.

After the Olympics, Hines joined the Miami Dolphins, who chose him in the sixth round of that year’s NFL Draft to be a wide receiver. He was given the number 99. Hines played in 10 games between 1969 and 1970 for the Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs.

He remains the only person to have played in an NFL regular season game out of the now more than 170 who have broken 10 seconds in the 100m over the last 55 years.