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A skateboarder performing an ollie

The ollie is an aerial skateboarding trick, invented by Alan "Ollie" Gelfand in 1976 ^[1] and later adapted to flat ground by Rodney Mullen. The ollie serves as a basis for many other skateboarding tricks, such as the kickflip, heelflip and pop-shove it. The trick is also known as the no hands aerial, because when performing an ollie, the skateboarder does not grab the board at all, and no accessories are attached to the skateboard.

The front foot can be seen dragging towards the top of the board.

The front foot is moved slightly more towards the center of the board. The skateboarder jumps up, and as he or she is about to take off he/she kicks the tail of the board down, while rapidly picking their back foot back up quickly. The kick gives the front end of the board upward momentum, and as the tail hits the ground, it rebounds making the board completely airborne. When the board takes off, its nose is much higher off the ground than the tail is. The skateboarder slides his or her front foot up and forward on the griptape. The movement between the shoe and the board levels the skateboard and takes it further off the ground. Then as the skater descends, they land on the bolts, preferably, and then bends their knees to absorb the impact. The Ollie is all about timing.

The invention of the Ollie changed skateboarding significantly. Prior to its invention, vertical skateboarders would grab the board before leaving the ramp. Crouching down to grab the board while riding through the transition absorbs momentum and makes the skater slow down. This meant that a skater would have to build up tremendous speed to perform a single aerial trick, most of which would be lost by performing the trick. Aerials could usually only barely go above the coping. Ollieing into a grab, as first done by Tony Hawk, allows the skater to maintain and even increase speed while performing aerials back-to-back. The action began taking place above the ramp rather than inside it. This invention signaled the end of the "slash and grind" era of pool skateboarding and changed the focus to aerials performed on a halfpipe.

Modern street skating would not exist at all without the Ollie. Street skaters use Ollies to get up on top of obstacles, clear gaps, and reach rails and edges to do grinds and slides. Every flip trick is a variation of the Ollie. It is for this reason that most skateboarders start trying to learn to Ollie before learning any other trick.

A skateboarder performing an ollie over a gap.

The highest official ollie from flat ground is 44.5 inches (113 cm), performed by Danny Wainwright at the Reese Forbes Ollie Challenge by Quiksilver, although Jose Marabotto from Peru was seen on a video from the early '90s clearing a stack of boards estimated at over 50 inches (127 cm).^[2] The highest official switch ollie is 40.125 inches (101.92 cm), performed by Alex Bland in a similar switch ollie competition.^[3]

• Trick & Tips: Ollie from Extreme Sports Channel
• Ollie Video