Taking this all in to consideration, and if one has a natural predisposition towards cynicism, one could understand Gonzalez’s presentation of the award to be part of a broader bid for Thrasher to be the primary publisher of skate parts. With the massive decline in the sales of and the monumental cost of producing physical DVD copies of full length videos, if Thrasher were to guarantee a skater or that skater’s sponsor that if they produced 4 or so minutes of quality footage and released it through Thrasher exclusively, bringing with it more hits to their site from people eager to see the footage and an inevitable increase in the cost of their ad space, that they would automatically make that skater front-runner for SOTY Thrasher would undoubtedly become a much more appealing outlet for releasing their solo part than any of Thrasher’s competing magazines/websites who though having their own awards have nothing nearly as prestigious and significant to offer as the SOTY trophy.
When one considers the other front-runners for this year SOTY specifically Justin “Figgy” Figeruoa and Guy Mariano there are certainly questions surrounding the legitimacy of Gonzalez’s win. Mariano in particular would have been the obvious choice for a great deal of skaters of a certain vintage. Having recovered from drug addiction that essentially took him out of the picture for the majority of late 90’s and early 00’s and coming back to reach the top of his field, securing the final part in Girl and Chocolate’s much anticipated “Pretty Sweet”( a video that with the transition from full lengths to solo-parts is being considered by many to be potentially the last great full length video) and continuing to push skateboarding by performing countless tricks that this time last year would have been considered impossible or at least impossible to make look good.
To a considerable portion of the skateboard community he would have been considered the obvious choice. Though, the logic behind the assumption Mariano would come out on top is not entirely watertight. At the end of the day the award is skater of the year not skater of the decade and if one is to just view Mariano on the merits of what he has done since this time last year it is arguable that he perhaps doesn’t deserve it to the same degree as Figgy and Gonzalez. Though Mariano’s pretty sweet part is mind-blowing in it’s technical wizardry especially when viewed through the lens of what has happened in Mariano’s life over the last 10 years releasing a video part of that kind of quality is almost a prerequisite for being considered for SOTY not a certainty that one will receive the trophy and one could argue that Mariano simply “didn’t do enough for the mag” as Jake Phelps would say, to be awarded SOTY. This is just another example of the discrepancy between what SOTY is and what it is considered to be in the minds of the skateboarding population as a whole.
