Flatground ollie

The flatground ollie is a term given for the skateboard trick "ollie" to chronicle its origins as the standard, foundation trick for street skateboarding. The name "ollie" comes from Alan Gelfand, the inventor of the trick, whose nickname was Ollie. He came up with the trick in the late 1970's as a maneuver performed on vertical terrain, on wooden, half-pipe ramp structures and in concrete pools. As a no-handed ariel, it was easier to apply on sloping transition than on flat terrain, so it was not done on flatground until Rodney Mullen aggressively pursued implementing the idea in the early 1980's. Once he mastered its invention, a new movement of inspired skaters quickly followed his example and implemented it for street skating. Early practitioneers of the flatground (rolling) ollie were Mark Gonzales, Natas Kaupas, Andy Howell, Christian Hosoi, and Tommy Guerrero. By 1986 it was regularly performed in professional "streetstyle" contests, and more advanced variations of it, like the kickflip, would be performed by street pros, both in contests and in videos, in the late 1980's.