In 1999, Tony Hawk, one of the most known and influential skateboarders of all time, attempted to do the impossible: The 900. A 2½-revolution (900 degrees) aerial spin performed on a skateboard ramp. It was considered the “holy grail” of the skateboarding world. He got ready, concentrated, determined – gained speed and momentum, jumped… and fell. He didn’t stop and tried again. The audience shouted, applaud, filled the atmosphere with energy, Tony jumped, spin, and fell. He did it again, and again, and after ten failed attempts, he succeeds! The audience went wild, Tony Hawk, the first person to ever complete the 900. You can feel the excitement in the recording of this historical event:
And then many people did it as well. Giorgio Zattoni, April 2004, Sandro Dias, May 2004, Alex Perelson, July 2009, and so on. Hawk himself did it again in 2011 and again on June 27, 2016, when he was 48 years old. In May of 2020, 11-year-old Brazilian Gui Khury became the first person to land a 1080 (he completed the 900 when he was 8 years old). How come something that wasn’t achievable before, became so common after it was finally accomplished? (We are excluding some claims that maybe, possibly, the 900 was actually achieved ones before Tony Hawk and we will leave it to sports historians to decide).
The “900” isn’t the only example. There are, actually, countless similar examples. Take for instance the story of Roger Bannister. For decades runners tried to accomplish the seemingly un-accomplishable “four-minute mile”: Running a mile (1.6km) in four minutes or less. Many sportsmen tried and failed, until 6 May 1954. On that day, Roger Bannister, who had minimal training comparing to other sportsmen, while he practiced as a junior doctor, broke the record. The announcer declared “The time was three…”, and the rest was drowned out by the cheers of the crowd. The exact time was 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds. Bannister’s record lasted just 46 days, and since then it has been broken over 1,400 times and improved by almost 17 seconds.
How this is even possible, a goal that wasn’t available for so long, suddenly, once it achieved, becomes the standard? It seems like there exists some mental barrier, that once crossed, doesn’t count as a barrier anymore. At the time, many people, sportswriters, and some doctors and scientists even thought that the four-minute mile is physically impossible. Bannister thought differently: “Even then people were taking about whether it would ever be possible for someone to run a mile in 4 minutes. … There was no logic in my mind that if you can run a mile in 4 minutes, 1.25, you can’t run it in 3:59. … I knew enough medicine and physiology to know it wasn’t a physical barrier, but I think it had become a psychological barrier.”
Hearing that, a few quotes come to mind, like “They did not know it was impossible, so they did it!” which is often attributed to Mark Twain, or a similar quote by Neil Gaiman: “If you don’t know it’s impossible it’s easier to do”.
This barrier is not unique for sports. Science has its own barriers. Luckily, there are people who break them. Such is the story of George Dantzig, who solved two open problems in statistics because he came later to a lecture, saw two questions on the blackboard, and mistakenly thought them to be homework. A few days later he submitted the solutions, apologizing to the professor for taking so long to do the homework — the problems seemed to be a little harder than usual.
Here is another story: Clear transparent incandescent lamps give off a sharp light, which is unpleasant to many people. In 1920, General Electric developed a 30 watt light bulb that had outside etching as a frosting effect. It made the light to make it softer; however, it made the globe bulb and decreased the light produced by 15–25 percent.
When Marvin Pipkin went to work for General Electric, he was assigned an impossible task as a practical joke. The task was to find a way to frost electric light bulbs on the inside without weakening the glass. He was not aware that this assignment was a joke, so he went about the task as if it were something that could be done. Pipkin produced an innovative acid etching process for the inside of the globe of an electric lamp that didn’t weaken the glass and in which there was minimal loss of diffusion of light.
Some people prefer to create these barriers, while others bring new ideas, literature, art, science, and innovation that frees the human spirit. Every new record pushes the barrier a bit further, raising our goals, enhancing our ambition, causing us to rethink what’s possible and what’s not. “Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!” said Audrey Hepburn, and G. M. Trevelyan once said “Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing.”
We, personally, agree with sportsmen: Don’t believe in the impossible – Do it.
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