Mancina tried not to let the diagnosis affect his childhood, but the degenerative disease eventually began to take his vision from him.Īlthough its progression was gradual at first, he rapidly lost the vision in his left eye over the course of just a year and a half. Retinitis pigmentosa is a rare genetic eye disease that affects the light-sensitive layer of tissue in the back of the eye and often leads to legal and complete blindness. However, at just thirteen-years-old, Mancina was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa during a routine optometry exam. “That’s when I fell in love with skating, and it took over my life.” “I met a group of friends who skated and who are all still my friends to this day,” said Mancina. It wasn’t until he moved to a different neighbourhood during his middle school years and met a group of skaters that Mancina began to truly appreciate skating. Never having tried his hand at the sport before and not knowing what it truly meant to be a skater, he would simply roll the skateboard around. Growing up in the suburbs of Michigan, Mancina would snowboard as a young boy during the winter seasons.Īfter reading in a magazine that skateboarding was a good way to work on his snowboarding techniques during the summer, Mancina, who was only 13 at the time, found himself investing more time in his skateboard. On 15 January 2022, legendary blind skateboarder Daniel Mancina showed the world there isn’t an obstacle he can’t tackle when he claimed the record title for the longest 50-50 grind on a skateboard (IS2), sliding a remarkable 6.85 m (22 ft 5 in).Īlthough the 35-year-old pro skater is globally recognised as the “Blind Skateboarder,” there was once a time where he was just a skateboarder. A Royal Oak, Michigan, USA, skateboarder is challenging our perceptions of what’s possible for the visually impaired.
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