According to the Team USA site, there are some need to know athletes from inline roller sports who are in the skating news for 2014 Olympic short track speed events.

For the first time since 1998, Team USA will not include Apolo Anton Ohno - who plans to work for NBC at the Sochi Games. But J.R. Celski, Chris Creveling, Eddy Alvarez, Lana Gehring, Emily Scott, Jessica Smith and Alyson Dudek will be our medal contenders. Three-time Olympian, Allison Baver, wants to attend her fourth Olympic Games in Sochi, but the discipline (short or long track) has not been determined.

The short track competition will be held at the Iceberg Skating Palace, on five dates, beginning on February 10th with the women's individual 500 meters, men's individual 1,500 meters, and women's 3,000-meter relay. Short track events will continue on February 13th, 15th, 18th and 21st.

One year after the success of their first video in Shanghai, Pierre Lelievre and Anthony Finocchiaro decided to film a skating adventure in India. They used both Seba FR1 Orange and Blue customized way FR-A by adding the soulplate, and the new SEBA Street with Invaders wheels for the very difficult urban skating surfaces on this safari-like trip.

And what a trip! They traveled through several cities, skated through and jumped over many unusual obstacles including working beasts, and even hitched rides with vehicles - though not recommended.

A few days ago I received a link to a video showing horse jump skating from Mike Van Erp, an instructor from the LondonSkaters. After a bit of searching, I found out that this roller sport is called kjoering. It is just like skijoering, with the exception that the athlete behind the horse is riding inline skates instead of snow skis. This difference allows kjoering activities to take place all year.

So far, I have found two types of horse jump skating. Some outdoor horse jump skating events are conducted outside on grass courses. Other indoor horse jump skating activities take place in arenas with sand along the course. Either way, the skaters use off road skating equipment that will allow them to skate over fairly rough, non-paved terrain.

Both kjoering and skijoering sports originated in Europe and only recently have been seen in the United States. If you want to learn more, visit the Offroad Kjoering website.

Liz Miller is passing the word, and so will I.

It looks like Ben Wilson from Portland, Oregon has an interesting new aftermarket accessory product for inline skates called a Flex Brake. This new skate brake product is intended to solve inline skating speed control and braking challenges. It is a simple lightweight braking system that can be installed on most inline speed skates or inline fitness skates with four or five wheels.

Ben hopes to help fund the cost of injection molding equipment needed for mass production via Kick Starter. If you would like to see, pre-order or help fund this new skating product, visit his page to help fund production of this new Flex Brake system.

Image © Ben Wilson