Editing Rodney Mullen (section)

===Invention of the flatground ollie===
Among his most significant contributions to the evolution of modern skateboarding,<ref name="ReferenceA"/> Rodney Mullen adapted the [[ollie (skateboarding)|ollie]], first pioneered by [[Alan Gelfand]] on [[Vert skateboarding|vert]] (where Gelfand would scoop off the back trucks to obtain more air off the wall, but without popping the tail of the skateboard in the process), to flat ground.  This ability to pop the board off of the ground and drag it upward into the air, gaining significant altitude and air time, allowed ollieing onto rails and obstacles and opened the door to more complex [[flip tricks]] and other flat ground tricks. The invention of this trick alone, even apart from the numerous other tricks that he has invented and his design work, has ranked Mullen as one of the most important skateboarders of all time.<ref name=rodneymullen.com/><ref name="Tran">{{cite web|author=Killeen Gonzalez|date=21 December 2011|title=TransWorld Magazine Releases List of the 30 Most Influential Skaters of All Time: A Fan's Reaction|url=https://sports.yahoo.com/top/news?slug=ycn-10723371|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131029212106/http://sports.yahoo.com/top/news?slug=ycn-10723371|archive-date=29 October 2013|access-date=23 December 2012|work=Yahoo! Sports|publisher=Yahoo! Inc}}</ref> In response to the praise that he has received for the flat ground ollie, Mullen stated in August 2012:

<blockquote>The origins of ollies—a guy named Alan Gelfand did it on vert...I had for a long time done a really simple movement, which was—it was just a transfer trick...and there are a ton of tricks where I needed to get to this side ''[demonstrates going from standing regular on his board to standing on the nose]''.  It's a transfer trick—I'd been doing that since the late seventies, so that I could, in turn, do things like this ''[demonstrates going from standing on the nose to a nose-stand and then landing back on his skateboard]''.  When I saw him [Gelfand] do it on the wall, I immediately—I'm thinking, the mechanics of it:  how do you get your board off the ground—how would you get your board off the ground like he did off the wall, 'cause I'm stuck on flat ground, not weightless...[T]he first ones I did took about, I don't know, five, ten minutes...I realized, that's just the same motion I've been doing for years—it's a see-saw motion; that's how ollies work...it's just a punch and a little hop; and the real key to it was dragging your foot and leveling it out, which brings the board up...In a back-handed way, people credit me within the documentary, Stacy [Peralta]'s ''Bones Brigade'' documentary, credit me with the importance of the ollie that gave the foundation for street skating, which is just skateboarding today, all that; and to me it was like, "Yeah, but, it's not a big deal."  Took me ten minutes, fifteen, half an hour, an hour; and the next thing you know, you're getting 'em this high, and that's what laid the foundation for everything else. So, in a sense, the biggest innovation for street skating, which is what they credit me for—it's not a big deal!<ref name="Lem"/></blockquote>

Throughout the 1980s, Mullen invented many of skating's flip tricks, including the [[kickflip]], the [[heelflip]], the 360-flip, and many others. These freestyle tricks were adapted to street skating by skaters such as [[Mark Gonzales]] and [[Natas Kaupas]]. Mullen's tricks are now considered essential building blocks of both modern street skateboarding and vert skateboarding.