ONE-STEPTHROUGH-SPORT: Skateboarding

Pengenalan Skateboarding

Skateboarding is the act of rolling on or interacting with a skateboard. Someone who skateboards is a skater (or skateboarder or most fully skateboard rider), though the shortest term may also refer to someone ice skating or roller skating. Like roller skating, skateboarding is often done for recreation and as a sport, but, more often than ice skating, it can be used as a method of transportation (it is faster than walking.)

Skateboarding has its origins in surfing, and was originally called "sidewalk surfing". Now, with wake-boarding replacing much water skiing and snowboarding replacing much skiing, skateboarding is increasingly unique. Surfers are doing more skateboarding tricks now, and the result is evolution in both sports. In the 1970's skateboarding was still a sidewalk "sport" with surfboard shaped boards designed more for the California vibe than for function. Narrow trucks kept the wheels close together and made the board a bit unstable. As boards and truck widened, there was also a growth of terrain skating. Originally drainage ditches and empty swimming pools were used, but then skaters began to build their own terrains, the Ramp. In the beginning, the ramp was a quarter pipe that you would skate up to and up to the edge at the top. A big improvement came with the Half Pipe. Though there are skateboard parks with extremely complex 3-D terrains, the half pipe is still the core of advanced skateboarding.

A skateboarding trick is a maneuver performed on a skateboard while skateboarding. Most tricks are based on the Ollie (once called the Ollie Pop), which was invented by Alan "ollie" Gefland of FLorida in the late 1970s. Skateboarding tricks can involve varials, jumps, flips, grabs, slides, grinds and stalls, and may even be combined with twists of various multiples of 180 degrees. Tricks which require some kind of ramp, sometimes a halfpipe, are known as transition tricks; the rest can be performed on flat ground or off of curbs and on rails and are known as street tricks. Competitive skateboarding is primarily judged on the difficulty and success of such tricks.

Skateboarding Skills

Ollie

The ollie is a technique of jumping on a skateboard in a way that pops the board off the street by kicking the tail section (or the nose section in the case of a nollie). This action lifts the opposite end of the board, at which point the front foot (in the case of an ollie) will slide forward causing the rear end to level out. Once this is achieved the rider lands all four wheels on the ground and rolls away with their knees bent. Invented by Alan "ollie" Gelfand in the seventies on Vert, it didn't really take skateboarders off the ground until Rodney Mullen figured out how to pop the tail in 1981. The highest official record is 44.5 inches by Danny Wainwright in 1999, although Jose Marabotto from Peru is seen on a video from the early 90's clearing a stack of boards estimated at over 50 inches.

Nollie

Nollie is a specific variation of the ollie where the skateboarder rolls forward in normal stance and pops the board off by kicking the nose section of the skateboard with his front foot. Nollie can not be made in fakie or switch stance because then it becomes either a switch ollie or a fakie ollie.

Switch ollie

The same principle as an ollie, but it is performed switch stance.