51-Year-Old defies the odds, pulls off incredible 900 at X Games
It’s said that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Though, sometimes an old dog can perform old tricks just as well as a young pup.
So it goes for the old dog of the X Games, Dennis McCoy, a guy who’s been competing in the annual spectacle since its inception in 1995, where he’s finished in the top ten in the BMX Vert event all but once in 23 years — he finished in 12th-place finish in 1996.
McCoy was 29 when he finished 12th. He’s 51 now and still going strong, with a gold, three silvers, and three bronzes in his X Games career.
And even beyond the half-century mark, he’s still doing tricks like this amazing 900 on the vert ramp.
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McCoy’s not the only guy turning himself into a human helicopter at an advanced age; his skateboard counterpart, Tony Hawk, who threw the first 900 ever in X Games competition back in 1999, pulled one off in 2016 at the age of 48.
Of course, Hawk didn’t do that under the bright lights with ESPN looking on.
It’s been fascinating watching guys like Hawk and McCoy take something that was once considered underground and rebellious and turn it mainstream.
Cities these days are building skateparks rather than baseball fields, and kids who were teenagers in the 1990s — when McCoy and Hawk first caught the attention of ESPN’s fledgling ESPN2 network and provided it with content to go alongside NHL hockey and World’s Strongest Man contests — are now passing 40 and raising kids of their own.
But just because the culture is shifting, time marches on and legends raise kids of their own doesn’t stop those legends from achieving the ultimate “Cool Dad” status.
When Hawk lands that 900, his teenage son Spencer is there to give him a hug.
And when McCoy lands a 900 in competition on his bike, even the commentators have to acknowledge that’s probably the only such trick they’ll see in the entire contest, the reward from the judges hardly worth the risk of wiping out and killing one’s entire score and chance of winning a medal.
They say that with age comes wisdom, and with wisdom comes caution.
But for Dennis McCoy, he’s as reckless at 51 as he was at 28 when he competed in the very first X Games. He takes to heart the words of the Roman historian Tacitus: “The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.”
Maybe that’s why he keeps showing up among the leaders every time he comes to compete.
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