Chris Joslin just tre-flipped El Toro.
If you follow the world of professional skateboarding or are part of the skateboard community, this is one of the biggest headlines of the decade. (You can find the video here. Disclaimer: NSFW language.)
What’s more likely is that you’ve never heard of Chris Joslin, or the legend that is El Toro.
“El Toro” is Spanish for “The Bull.” It happens to be a high school in Lake Forest, California, and home to one of the most iconic spots in skateboard lore: a 20-stair monstrosity that has claimed so many broken bones the school actually built a locked gate to stop skateboarders from jumping off of it.
Stair sets are a staple of street skateboarding. Skaters fearlessly jump from the top, sometimes adding flair by flipping their boards before landing. But the more stairs you add, the more dangerous the physics become.
El Toro boasts 20 stairs. That’s roughly a 14-foot vertical drop with an 18-foot horizontal gap. To even clear it, you have to be traveling around 15 mph. It is the largest stair set where a flip trick has ever been recorded—and until recently, that list included only one person: Dave Bachinsky, who famously kickflipped it nearly 20 years ago.
History was made last week.
Thrasher Magazine dropped Chris Joslin’s “G-MA” video, and the feature clip was the impossible: a tre-flip down El Toro. A tre-flip is a 360-degree horizontal spin combined with a kickflip. It’s technical, it’s chaotic, and doing it down a 14-foot drop is pure insanity.
He landed it. He rode away clean.
I found myself getting emotional watching this sounds. I know how that sounds—a 32-year-old guy tearing up over a skate video—but Chris’s story is a masterclass in resilience.
The clip is less than 20 seconds long, but the story starts decades ago. Chris was born in Cerritos, California, into what I would describe as a chaotic upbringing. He never really knew his father, who was killed when Chris was seven. His mother battled severe addiction. His older brother introduced him to skating before being incarcerated.
The one constant was his grandmother. She was his caretaker and his biggest supporter. He pays homage to her by writing “G-MA” on his grip tape, and this video part was dedicated to her.
But the battle for El Toro didn’t start last week.
Eight years ago, Chris first set his sights on this gap. The footage from back then shows him attempting it over and over, with each failure looking less like a sport and more like a car crash.
Eventually, he landed it. He caught the board, hit the ground… and his truck broke.
He didn’t roll away. In the skate community, if you don’t roll away, it doesn’t count. He had done the impossible, but the equipment failed him. He walked away with a couple of broken skateboards, a bruised body, and “unfinished business.”
Fast forward to today. He went back. Now a father, eight years older, with a lifetime of injuries, he went back to battle the beast again. And this time, he won.
The viral clip is 18 seconds of perfection. The reality is a lifetime of mental battles, physical trauma, and getting back up.
In the era of social media, we are addicted to the “make.” We consume the victory in short clips, ignoring the years of eating concrete it took to get there.
We just see the highlights on LinkedIn: the promotion, the new job, the funding, the acquisition. We rarely see the tears, the failures, and the heartbreak that preceded the post.
I feel this deeply right now.
I’ve documented my journey leaving an awesome job to start Kru Talent Group. I post about how much I love recruiting, but the truth is, there’s a side that isn’t so glamorous. I am less than five months into this journey, and I’m still absolutely terrified of the future.
I sold my house and moved across the country to chase this dream. I never know where my next paycheck is coming from. I battle self-doubt daily. I’ve forced myself to learn sales and marketing from scratch, and I’ve failed more times than I can count. I’ve had prospects hang up on me and been called names I can’t repeat here (cold calling sucks, LOL).
I speak with job seekers every day who are in the same boat. Some have been laid off. Some are applying to hundreds of jobs without a single callback. Some are barely getting by financially, battling depression and the feeling that the “call” is never going to come.
This is why Chris Joslin’s story hits me so hard.
I had the pleasure of watching Chris skate live the last two summers at the Rockstar Energy Open right here in downtown Portland. Standing front row with my wife, watching him destroy the course, you realize the effortless style he has is actually just the result of thousands of hours of effort. It was the highlight of my summer to see him skate in person.
We need to stop comparing our “behind the scenes” footage to everyone else’s highlight reel. He didn’t land that trick because he is immune to falling. He landed it because he was willing to take slam after slam, walk back up those 20 stairs, and try again. And again. And again.
If you are in the middle of a job search, or building a new business, you likely can relate to this feeling of hitting the ground over and over. That feeling isn’t failure. That feeling is the process.
Don’t let the silence of the struggle fool you. We are all falling, or failing, or whatever you want to call it. The only difference is who decides to get back up.
Your clip is coming. Keep pushing.