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The kickflip is a maneuver in skateboarding in which a rider flips their skateboard 360° along the axis that extends from the nose to the tail of the deck. When the rider is regular footed the board spins clockwise if viewed from the front.
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It was the first of many modern flip tricks to be invented or modified by Rodney Mullen in the early 1980s. The original Kickflip was invented by pioneer Curt Lindgren prior to 1978 and was only modified by Mullen. In March 2011, the first kickflip in surfing was landed by Zoltan "The Magician" Torkos.
Origin
In the 1970s freestyle skateboarders learned to flip the board over beneath them by lifting an edge of the board with the top of one toe. While the board flipped completely over, It did not gain much clearance from the ground, and the setup required the rider to stand more parallel to the direction of motion, with both feet facing the nose. Very well known and commonly performed today, the kickflip is a basic skateboarding trick. Once they have mastered the trick on flat ground, many skateboarders like to up the stakes and start taking this recently learned maneuver down obstacles. They also start combining it with other tricks such as kickflip to frontside boardslide.
In 1982 Rodney Mullen invented the modern form of the trick, initially naming it the "magic flip". He first would use his relatively new flatground ollie to leave the ground, then, instead of lifting an edge with a toe, he initiated the flip by sliding his front foot off the top of the board.
Mullen's kickflip technique gave him more control in several areas: the height of the clearance, the initiation time and speed of the flip, and the board's direction during the flip. This technique was quickly adopted by freestyle skaters and later by street skaters, introducing skateboarding to the era of flip tricks, many of which Rodney Mullen also created.
Execution
To perform a kickflip, the rider ollies into the air, and lifts the back foot from the board while simultaneously sliding the front foot off the skateboard diagonally forward and towards the heel of the foot. This front foot motion, sometimes called "the flick", spins the board, flipping it completely over. Before landing, the rider stops the spin by returning the feet to the board as it nears its original position.
The board revolves around its longitudinal axis, like an aileron roll. To understand this motion and the direction of rotation, imagine stepping backwards off of a skateboard, leaving it in front of you, then rolling it over on the ground toward you; during the kickflip, the board spins similarly, but in mid-air beneath the rider. During a heelflip, a similar trick, the board rotates in the opposite direction.
Variations
Once a skateboarder masters the kickflip, many variations are possible: