Rodney Mullen

Rodney Mullen (born August 17 1966, Gainesville, Florida) - Skateboarder

Rodney Mullen is the most influential skateboarder in the history of skateboarding. The majority of modern, skateboarding tricks which involve flipping of the skateboard, and the essential "flatground" ollie, were invented by him in the 1980's.

Mullen started skateboarding on borrowed boards when he was 8 and at age 10 he got his first skateboard. His father opposed his son's wishes to practice the sport, however, he finally agreed to give Rodney a skateboard on condition that he always wore pads, with the understanding that if he were to ever get hurt, he would have to quit. On January 1, 1977, Mullen had his first skateboard, a black Bonzai.

His first sponsor was the Inland Surf Shop where he used to skate in their carpark. After winning first place at the Kona contest in 1979, he was sponsored by Walker Skateboards. In 1980 at 13 he turned professional after winning first place in freestyle competition, and began skateboarding for the legendary Powell Peralta Bones Brigade team.

In 1988, Mullen appeared in the feature film Gleaming the Cube, alongside fellow Bones Brigade team members and movie star Christian Slater. Mullen's other videos include The Bones Brigade Video Show, Bones Brigade Video II: Future-Primitive, Bones Brigade Video III: The Search for Animal Chin, and Bones Brigade Video IV: Public Domain. He also appeared as a guest on That's Incredible!.

In early 1989, Mullen left Powell Peralta and formed World Industries with Steve Rocco. He later skated for another World Industries affiliated company, Plan-B. In 1990, his beloved form of skateboarding, freestyle, effectively ended, and Mullen adapted to street skating throughout the 1990's. He was featured in several Plan-B videos: The Questionable Video, Virtual Reality, and Second Hand Smoke. In the late 1990's, Mullen left Plan-B and formed the A-Team. He has also starred in the extremely popular Rodney Mullen vs. Daewon Song video series, pushing the limits of technical, street skating by taking his tricks to new levels of difficulty and new terrain.

Mullen's ability to do the seemingly impossible on a skateboard has earned him the nicknames "The Godfather of Street Skating", "The King of Freestyle" and "The Mutt" by skateboarding fans.

After A-Team's end, Mullen joined Enjoi Skateboards. His shoe sponsor, Globe, put out a new full length team video "Opinion" in 2001. Mullen also won the Transworld Readers' Choice Award for Skater of the Year in 2002. At the end of 2002, Mullen left Enjoi and created a new company, Almost Skateboards out of Dwindle Distribution. With a team consisting of Daewon Song, Ryan Sheckler, Chris Haslam, Greg Lutzka, Cooper Wilt, William Patrick (a fictional character created for the video), and Rodney Mullen himself. In December 2004, Almost skateboards released the much-anticipated video "Almost-Round Three." The "Round Three" video finds Rodney Mullen versus Daewon Song once again. He currently wears Matix clothing as his apparel sponsor.

Rodney Mullen has lost only one freestyle contest in his entire life, and in that contest, he came in 2nd due to a cold. He has won every other freestyle contest he has entered and even one vert contest.

Tricks

See: Skateboarding trick for detailed description of trick skating maneuvers

Rodney Mullen has invented the following skateboarding tricks during his career:

• Godzilla Rail Flip
• 540 Shove-it
• 50-50 Saran Wrap
• Helipops (360 Nollie)
• Gazelles
• No Handed 50-50 Kickflip
• Heelflip
• Double heelflips
• Impossible
• Ollie Impossible
• Sidewinders
• 360 Flip
• 360 pressure Flip
• Casper 360 Flip
• 50-50 Sidewinders
• One footed Ollie
• Backside 180 Flip
• Ollie Nosebones
• Ollie Fingerflip
• Airwalks
• Frontside Heelflip Shove-its
• Switchstance 360 Flips
• Helipop Heelflips
• Kickflip Underflip
• Casper Slides
• Half Flip Darkslide
• 540 double kickflip
• Caballerial impossible
• Half-cab kickflip underflip
• Handstand flips
• Rusty slides
• Kickflip

He is also one of only a handful of people in the world who can execute a Yoyo Plant (an extremely difficult handplant invented by Yoyo Schulz in 1982). He invented his own variation of this trick in 1987, the Yo-ho, which is regularly performed today by professional freestyler Terry Synnott.de:Rodney Mullen fr:Rodney Mullen nl:Rodney Mullen pl:Rodney Mullen sl:Rodney Mullen