Carlesa's Inline Skating Blog

The Monday Night Skate promotional TV commercial is schedued to run until October in 2008. It was shot in this spring in the Letzigrund Stadion in Zurich, Switzerland and is a wonderful example of good advertising for roller sports. So what are they selling? The Monday Night Skate is a little different from other regularly scheduled group social rollerblading events, because it not only takes a different route but also takes place in a different city every a Monday night. Skaters check in at the official website, MondayNightSkate.ch, to find out where the action is each week. It appears that there is an good skating community an Switzerland, and the Alpine terrain is not putting them off!!!

More Monday Night Skate Information

• Monday Night Skate Information
  
  
• See the Monday Night Skate Commercial

The USA Roller Sports 2008 Speed and Figure Skating National Championships started on Sunday in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Josh Wood, who lives and trains at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, is one of the ranking speed skaters in the inline speed events this season. Josh is also a member of the 2008 Inline Speed Skating World Team that will represent the United States at the Federation Internationale de Roller Sports (FIRS) Speed Skating World Championships in Gijon, Spain September 4-12, 2008. This is his seventh time qualifying for the world team with qualification based on his performance at the 2008 Inline Speed Skating Banked Track and Road National Championships in June.

Now Josh dreams of transferring his ability to inline skate on top of a wooden track surface into the skills needed to carve a path in an ice track to race for a gold medal in the Winter Olympics. Watch the KLKN Channel 8 interview to hear him tell his story.

Photo © Steve Harriman

If you want to take a look at inline speed events for all ages, USARS will be streaming live video from the Indoor Speed Skating Nationals in Lincoln, Nebraska from Sunday, July 13 through Saturday, July 19. Event coverage for Roller Figure Skating National events will run from Sunday, July 20 to Sunday, August 3. Please check the indoor speed skating and roller figure skating schedules for times.

Photo © Champshots.com

Take a few minutes to visit USA Roller Sports in their new Olympic web home. The content from the old site is not all uploaded, but USARS still looks great sitting among all of the other USOC Sports. The expected official launch date for the new site is September 1, 2008. Until then, any content developed before June 1, 2008 may still be archived on the old pages.

Suggestions for site use during the transition:

• Use the old USARS site to find information dated before June 1, 2008.
  
  
• Use the new USARS site to find information dated after June 1, 2008.
  
  
• Register at the new site (just below the survey) to get newsletters and other site privileges.
  
  
• Use the site survey to give input on the new design and functions.

I hope this is part of the FIRS effort to get Roller Sports into the Olympics? Seems like a smart move to me.

On July 12th and 13th, Nice, France will be the site of the International Freestyle Skating Association (IFSA) Acrobatic World Cup. IFSA is a member of the Federation Internationale de Roller Sports. This cup event is hosted by Nice Roller Attitude at the Palais des Sports with a combination of speed slalom, freestyle slalom, free jump and high jump competitions. Each category's competition will be skated and scored at one level without any age classifications, but men's and women's events will be separated. These events will attract competitors from all around the world.

Police in the northern Australian city of Cairns consider inline skates, horses, bicycles and skateboards as vehicles under drink-driving laws according to a BBC News article.

We all consider our skates as a form of alternative transportation, even those skaters who also inline skate as part of an organized sport. But we sometimes forget that once we strap on the wheels, we leave the pedestrian world and become individual vehicles and drivers.

Start With These Traffic Basics:

• Skate with traffic, not against it.
• Skate as close to the right side of the road as you can.
• Use signals when turning.
• Obey all traffic signs and traffic signals.
• Use the shoulder or a bike lane instead of the road whenever possible.

Roller basketball seemed to be growing a few seasons ago – or at least it was talked about. According to news articles today, there appears to be participation among schoolchildren in Kerala, India and the game is popular in states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Puducherry. Some background is available from London Skaters and dated event information is on other skating sites. But, most of the active and current sites are in Germany and the Netherlands:

• Dutch Roller Inline Basketball League
• InlineBasketball.de
• Hamburger Inline Skating Club
• RollSportVerband.de
• London Skaters Roller Basketball Article

But where are the US players and sites? Any inline hoopsters out there? Do we just do this at home now?

Skating while on vacation is easier than you think. Just replace a couple of shoe options with your skates and protective gear when you pack your luggage, and with a little planning you can let your skates do the walking on vacation tours and sightseeing trips.

Consider the following tips to include skating in your vacation plans:

• Resort, hotels, motels and cruise vacations will require a preliminary facilities inquiry about skate policies on the grounds and on board.
• Find out if there are parks, paths or bike trails nearby.
• Check to see if skate rentals are available for others in your party, if needed.
• Are there any skating restrictions or traffic laws that affect rollerbladers at your vacation destination.

You could even schedule your vacations with other skaters who share your love of the sport and the vacation spot. Then you have someone to share tour adventures and even take photos with you in them.

Seventeen year-old Kimani Griffin of Winston Salem, North Carolina is a USARS speed skater and a member of the the Piedmont Speed Club. Kimani shares his passion for life between classical guitar and inline speed skating. He had his premier concert debut at Carnegie Hall in New York City this past March. But, before he entered the stage to play guitar, video footage of Kimani racing during the 2007 US Indoor National Speed Skating Championships in Omaha, Nebraska were played on the big screen. What a wonderful tribute to his skating and roller sports.

Kimani has devoted time and energy to both activities for ten years. He recently received an endowment from the U.S. Olympic Committee to train under two-time Olympian Derek Parra in Utah for the 2010 Winter Games. For him, there is no choice between playing the guitar and speed skating – he could never do one without the other.

See the Kimani's TV Carnegie Episode with speedskating clips this week only from July 2-9.

Photo Courtesy USA Rollersports

In Jakarta, Indonesia traffic police on inline skates are the new weapon in the battle against vehicle gridlock. The plan is for inline officers to reach traffic jams in the capital Jakarta faster than a car or motorbike and then direct vehicles to untangle traffic. A professional inline skater was hired by the city to train the officers. Let's hope they are fast and agile enough to get themselves safely into and out of the jams.