About Rodney Mullen
John Rodney Mullen is an American professional skateboarder who practices freestyle skateboarding and street skateboarding. He is considered one of the most influential skateboarders of all time. Mullen is credited for inventing numerous tricks, including the flatground ollie, kickflip, heelflip, impossible, and 360-kickflip. As a result, he has been called the "godfather of modern street skating". 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. Throughout the 1980s, Mullen invented many of skating's flip tricks, including the kickflip, the heelflip, the 360-flip, among others. Rodney Mullen won his first world freestyle skateboard championship at the age of 14; over the following decade, he won 34 out of 35 freestyle contests, thus establishing the most successful competitive run in the history of the sport. He promised his strict father that he would cease skateboarding the first time he became seriously injured: My dad wouldn't let me have a skateboard.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.