Matty Jessee- Photo by Keith Halterman
It’s the first aspiration of every skater. It consumes us to the point of no return.
The ollie.
Usually the first trick every skater learns, and the foundation of tricks for years to come. Once we have mastered the ollie many of us forget the effort it took to learn it. We almost think of it in the same respects as learning to walk, all of us know how to do it, but none of us really remembers learning.
Occasionally we will get brief reminders of how amazing just a “simple ollie” is, as the random on-looker will pass by and ask “how do you get it to stick to your feet? Is that magic??”. Most skaters will give a funny answer or explain the mechanics of it and go about their session, but what if we stopped to really think about what is actually going on? We really are defying gravity!
The fact that we can get a thin piece of wood with some sandpaper to stick to our feet to leaping up while hurdling over uneven surfaces is something special. We have spent hours figuring the exact moment and strength to smash the tail of the board to the ground and at the exact correlating moment to slide the opposite foot to the front propelling that piece of wood into a level field and then landing with balance that only gymnasts usually possess.
We think of the ollie as a basic maneuver, but it is far being basic, it is extraordinary. So next time you just pop up a curb, congratulate yourself on being something special, a skateboarder.
