Aggressive skating is an extreme sport, performed on inline aggressive skates that are specially designed for stunts - jumps and grinds. The sport, often referred to by participants as rollerblading, blading or rolling, mainly consists of a wide variety of grinds, aerial tricks, slides and other advanced skating maneuvers. Aggressive skating was born in the 1980s. It first started with people...
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Aggressive skating is an extreme sport, performed on inline aggressive skates that are specially designed for stunts - jumps and grinds. The sport, often referred to by participants as rollerblading, blading or rolling, mainly consists of a wide variety of grinds, aerial tricks, slides and other advanced skating maneuvers. Aggressive skating was born in the 1980s. It first started with people jumping over barriers and doing spins in the air. However it was only the early 1990s when aggressive skating really took off as an action sport and during that period it has received mainstream media attention. The sport was pioneered by skaters like Chris Edwards (US), Arlo Eisenberg (US), Brooke Howard Smith (NZ), Chris Mitchell (US) and Brandon Hardin (US). After it's huge decay during the late 1990s, aggressive skating has regained some of it's original popularity during the 2000s. Even though aggressive skating has been removed from the X Games in 2005, it is still part of numerous contests like the LG Action Sports Championships, Winterclash, Summerclash and Bittercold Showdown. During the 2000s, the rollerblading (aggressive skating) industry has been progressing towards the "skater-owned" model, as many previous athletes like Arlo Eisenberg, Jon Julio, Brian Shima and Jochen Smuda have founded rollerblading companies themselves. Skater-owned companies put a high emphasis on supporting rollerblading events and well-performing rollerbladers in order to push rollerblading as a sport as well as a community. Street skating is where skating was born, and involves skaters going around cities and towns grinding hand rails, grinding ledges, jumping stairs, turning anything on the regular street into an obstacle. One of the most common grinds is the soul grind.

Photographs By Toby Page Photography
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