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Ryan Sheckler

    Rodney Mullen is really one of the best skaters in the world he can do with no technical freestyle tricks so easily. Mullen is 36 years old and is still one of the best skaters in the world.

    Mullen's childhood, when Mullen was a kid you could always see him carrying his skateboard around the town. In a way skateboarding was his only real possession. now that he is older he has a lot of other stuff like a car, stereo, and a bank account and he can say he actually earned it. Mullen always wanted to skate. But, his dad wouldn't let him. His dad was a multimillionaire doctor and was really strict. Mullen asked his dad many times if he could get a skateboard but his dad said no. But on New Years 1977 he asked his dad again and his dad said his first major injury he had to stop skating or the first time he caught him without his pads. In no time at all about 9 months after he stated skating Mullen got his first sponsor of Inland Surf Shop.

    In Florida his home state he started winning contest right away and showed everybody up in California at the Kona contest. In 1978 and ranked 1st place in the Oceanside contest and was instantly sponsored by walker. By now his father decided for Mullen to try and master a different sport or hobby. Mullen's dad's choice of profession was golf but Mullen rebelled.

    In 1988 he got an invitation to go to San Diego and skate in a contest there. He was 13 years old at the time and was going to be competing with pro skater Steve Rocco. The competition was close. They kept on awarding both of them the same amount of points but finally in the last round Rodney one by a couple of points. After this event his father decided to keep him in skateboarding.

    In the 80's skateboarding was very much at an all time low. Mullen started writing step-by-step instructions on how to do complex, hard freestyle tricks. In the middle for the 80's skateboarding picked up again due to the skating videos.

    Slowly Rodney entered into the world of new skating. He put away the old school skateboard and started learning new school tricks and everything else that has to go with that. Rodney dominated freestyle skating for over a decade.