Aggressive Inline Skating.

 Aggressive inline skating is an extreme sport, performed on specially designed inline skater with a focus on tricks, stunts and style. The sport mainly consists of a wide variety of grinds, aerial tricks, slides and other advanced skating maneuvers. Participants often refer to the activity as "rollerblading", "blading" or "rolling". The sport is divided into "vert" (vertical), park, and street skating, referring to the environment in which the activity occurs. Different environments lend themselves to different tricks, thus the distinction. Inline skates, skates designed to work like ice skates during periods of warm weather, were invented by Louis Legrange of France in 1849. Legrange designed the skates for an opera where a character was to appear to be skating on ice. The skates were problematic and unsuccessful as the wearer could not turn nor could they stop. In 1980 a group of ice hockey players in Minnesota were looking for a way to practice during the summer. Scott and Brennan Olson formed the company Rollerblade, Inc., to sell skates with four polyurethane wheels arranged in a straight line on the bottom of a padded boot. In 1988, Rollerblade introduced the first aggressive inline skate, the Rollerblade Lightning TRS. Aggressive inline skating finally developed as an organized sport in the early 1990s. The Aggressive Skaters Association (ASA) was formed by a number of aggressive inline skaters in 1994 as a forum to develop rules governing competitions and equipment. The sport was included in the first X-Games in 1995 and included vertical ramp and street event competitions. It reached its height in popularity in the late 90s, with mainstream movies like Disney's Brink! and other films. Aggressive inline skating was removed from the ESPN X-Games in 2005 although it is still included in the Asian X Games, LG Action Sports Competitions, Montpellier Fise, and many other large competitions.