Ollie Impossible
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An Ollie Impossible is a skateboarding trick which was first performed by freestyler Rodney Mullen in the early 1980s. The Impossible gained tremendous popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s (along with Pressure Flips), especially in street skating.
A trick which was named for its significant difficulty, the Ollie Impossible is performed when a rider "scoops" a skateboard vertically around his or her back foot a full 360 degrees, landing in the original riding position. A skateboarder may suggest that this resembles a close-kept, vertical 360 degree shove-it, but in any case the scooping motion is absolutely essential if the rider is to 'pull' the trick.
A variation of this once popular trick was the "Front-Footed" Impossible. It was performed by using the forward motion of the front foot during a normal ollie, combined with a downward angling movement of the front foot (pointing the toes down) and a swirling motion (counter-clockwise for regular foot, clockwise for goofy foot) to spin the board around the front foot and return it to original position. Due to the angles and degree of movement involved, this version was easier to perform when ollieing a short flight of stairs or small to medium sized "street gap".
The Ollie Impossible is no longer a staple trick in skateboarding videos or competitions. That being said, it is sometimes performed by veteran pros like Ed Templeton (a popularizer of the trick), and may be seen in contemporary videos such as Emerica's This is Skateboarding (2003).
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