A young skateboarder from Ukraine has gone viral after skating legend Tony Hawk gave her a social media shout-out.
Svetlana Yurchenko from Kiev posted a video of herself screaming and jumping in excitement after she landed a kickflip for the first time. The video, originally posted July 11, spread across skateboarding accounts, eventually grabbing Hawk’s attention.
Hawk then re-posted her video for his millions of followers, writing that one of the few positive effects of the current global pandemic has been a renewed interest in learning how to skateboard.
“The silver lining of all this is seeing the excitement of newcomers on social media,” he wrote. “It’s been uplifting to see them learning / relearning to skate during their plentiful ‘downtime.’ I believe they are unknowingly in pursuit of the exact feeling that @sveyurchenko got when she recently landed her first kickflip.”
“Keep trying, it’s worth the effort,” he concluded.
On Twitter, a user re-posted a video from Yurchenko’s Instagram story that shows her stunned reaction to Hawk’s shout-out.
“Sorry for the swearing, but it was very truly unexpected,” her Instagram story says.
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