Thankful For ‘Tone — Antonio Durao Raw Clips From the Hardbody Video

If you’re around skateboarding long enough, there is a big chance that your favorites become not the skaters you’ve studied in videos from afar, but those you have gotten the chance to witness in real life. Over all the years of doing QS, we have been blessed with chances to see a lot of incredible skating from a wide array of greats, yet watching Antonio remains a singular experience.

E.J. put together all of Antonio’s raw clips from The Hardbody Video, and it is perhaps the closest depiction of what watching him skate in real life is — at least as close as a mediated video could get.

It is probably worth pointing out that, yes, those three tries of the nollie backside flip down the World Trade steps were the only tries of the nollie backside flip, but so much of what ended up in The Hardbody Video was third or first try. And the improvisational, always-on way in which this dude rolls down the street leaves so much un-filmed. By the time you suggest filming it, he’s already a block away, doing some other wild shit that someone else didn’t get a camera out quick enough for, too.

Thank you Antonio, an endless inspiration in relaying what is truly possible on a skateboard — even if so many of those possibilities are captured only in memory. Below is what the VX made it out for.

Filmed and edited by Emilio Cuilan.