Dan Mancina is blind, but on a skateboard, he’s a sight to behold. At 13, he was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a hereditary condition that causes a person to gradually lose his or her vision.

Now with just 5% of his eyesight left (he has peripheral vision out of a tiny portion of his right eye), Mancina has had to give up driving and many other things. But, as for his other four-wheel ride, he’s charging forward.

Mancina learned how to skateboard at seven year old and after he lost his sight, he adapted his skating skills accordingly so that he could still ollie his way over obstacles and kickflip down staircases.

“I got inspired one day and built a box, then I was just like I’m gonna see what I can do. Originally I was doing it without my cane but the cane gives it such a dramatic effect. It’s hilarious like, “Whoa, is that dude blind?” I’ll take the box to a tennis court and put it along the white line in front of a crack. I’ll pop over the crack and know the box is coming up, and I feel the box with my cane and just hit it from there,” he said in an interview with Jenkem.

 

 

Mancina struggled initially, however, with making massive changes in nearly every area of his life. He even quit skating as he was trying to figure it all out.

“For a while, I thought I had to shape my life around my blindness,” Mancina told the Press Association. “I was searching for what a blind person does, or can do, when in fact I needed to search for ‘what does Dan do?’”

Once he adjusted and got used to his new normal, he hopped back on his board.

“Slowly, with some training and starting to do the things that I had once done as a sighted person, I was able to regain my confidence,” he said. “Getting back on my board gave me the ability to have confidence in my blindness, to express myself again, and have the power to show people who I truly was in the way I wanted to be seen, as a skater.”

Even Tony Hawk has been inspired by Mancina.

 

 

He may be taking more spills now, but Mancina is showing us all that with patience, persistence and a willingness to adapt, we can tackle more than we think.

For more on Mancina, catch this feature video from Red Bull.