The ollie, one of the most
fundamental and
basic tricks in
skateboarding, is effectively a
jump while keeping the board
stuck to your feet (ie, the board goes up and comes down with you). It's used as a
simple way to
jump curbs and over obstacles. It must be
mastered before an
adept can attempt more
complex tricks.
It is by no means the singularly most important trick. To say that would be akin to saying the
heart is the
most important organ in your body - you still can't live without your
liver, or
brain,
lungs, etc.
It was invented (and named after) Andrew "Ollie" Gelfand in the
mid-
1970s when skateboarding was still developmental, although it had been around since the
1950s. It subsequently led to a dramatic
evolutionary rise in skateboarding. The highest ollie is 113 cm / 44.5 inches performed by
Danny Wainright in
1999 for a cool
$10,000. Despite being a relatively
simple trick, its mechanics are fairly
complex.
The stance for the ollie varies, but the back foot
must be on the tail of the board, and the front is
generally somewhere in the middle. What happens is the skater pushes down hard with the
front foot, lifting his body. Just as he is about to go
up, he
slams the
back foot down on the
tail of the
skateboard (causing it to tilt up) while
simultaneously lifting the
front foot and
sliding it up the board. This causes the front of the board to lift and attempt to back
flip. However the front foot
drags up the board and levels it, as well as adding further vertical lift. Upon landing,
ideally the feet should land directly over the
trucks, or you run the
risk of
snapping the board.
More complex tricks, such as the
kickflip,
heelflip shuv-it flip,
hardflip,
180-ollie and others use an ollie combined with the
flick of the foot.
Of course there is much more to these tricks that simply that, I'm merely demonstrating the importance of the ollie.
See
basic skateboard terminology to understand the
skateboard, and note I referred to the
skater as a
male for
simplicitys sake only - I discourage the idea that
skateboarding is an exclusively
male sport.