Ollie (skateboarding) - Origin

Origin

In 1976, Alan Gelfand, nicknamed "Ollie", while skateboarding in pools and bowls learned to perform no-handed aerials using a gentle raising of the nose and scooping motion to keep the board with the feet.

In 1982, while competing in the Rusty Harris contest in Whittier, California, Rodney Mullen debuted an ollie on flat ground, which he had adapted from Gelfand's vertical version by combing the motions of some of his existing tricks. Notably, Mullen used a "see-saw" motion, striking the tail of the board on the ground to lift the nose, and using the front foot to level the board in mid-air. While Mullen was not initially impressed with his flat ground ollie, and did not formally name it, he realized it opened up a second, elevated plane on which to perform tricks.

Mullen's flat ground ollie is now considered to have transformed the practice of skateboarding. Rodney won the Rusty Harris con prop test, was afterwards asked by many riders to demonstrate the trick, and later in the year it would appear with the name "Ollie-pop" as a "trick tip" in the skateboarding magazine Thrasher.

The flat ground ollie technique is strongly associated with street skateboarding; mini ramp and vert riders can also use this technique to gain air and horizontal distance from the coping, but half-pipe riders typically rely more on the board's upward momentum to keep it with the rider, more similar to Gelfand's original technique.