roadskater.net

According to the front page at http://www.colbertnation.com/home, Olympic ice speedskater Joey Cheek is scheduled to be a guest on The Colbert Report this evening on the Comedy Central network.

Not much to say on this as I wasn't able to watch any vid, but Joey Mantia rolls and rules again...Presti has been near the top for a long time. Impressive.

There's a whole lot of skating going on in Harbin (Haerbin) China. I've been following some of the stories and looking at photos this week, without a whole lot to say about it, since I don't know much about these young athletes. 

Here's one way to find some good stuff...

http://search.news.cn/language/search.jspa?id=en&t=1&t1=0&ss=&ct=&n1=speedskating

If you have a few minutes to watch some videos about ice speedskating stories indoors and out, check out this contest where you can vote on which ones go to the next round. I assume United Statesians can vote! Check out the video from Canada's skaters...

http://www.ingspeedskatingchallenge.com/video.php

Methinks thou must yield thine (or someone's!) email address to vote...or at least something that looks like an email address. But watching the videos is fine for me.

Noticed a link to this editorial in the "Speedskating" sidebar:

Published August 25, 2008 10:30 pm - Heiden's accomplishment merits discussion in greatest-ever debate

EDITORIAL: Famed Lake Placid Olympian Eric Heiden overshadowed by Michael Phelps

[...]Jesse Owens, Carl Lewis, Pavo Nurmi, Bjorn Dahlie and Mark Spitz among others, have all been mentioned as those Phelps has surely surpassed.

I'm a couple of weeks slow in getting this up, but there's a video clip online of Olympic ice speedskating champion and Greensboro native Joey Cheek talking to Stephen Colbert about human rights abuses in Darfur and why his visa to attend this summer's Beijing Olympics was suddenly revoked. I thought that he came across very well.

Hi All: My name is Marianne and I am a new member of roadskater.net. I live in Canmore, Alberta, Canada. I will be skating A2A for the first time. From all the things I read on the web it sounds like a very exciting journey. Unfortunately there are not many inline skaters in this town. We have quite a big ice speed skating community, but they all train in Calgary in the summer.

Funny how my parents think I'm young, and I think I'm old sometimes, young others, mostly depending if I've been forced to look in a mirror, or to look at my hands, or help me, otherwise be faced with reality of that sort. The inner reality is often far different, and yay for that....

At my son's urging, we finally watched the Transformers movie last night. At about 1 hour 50 we were treated to Transformer 'Bumblebee' speed skating down a highway. This is the clip they showed on the Oscars, prompting me to yell "Hey! That robot just did a crossover!".

Latest news on Olympic speedskater Joey Cheek: Having collected 42,000 signatures on petitions calling for China, Sudan's largest international trading partner, to help in putting an end to the genocide taking place in Darfur, he personally delivered the petitions on July 25th to the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Here's a very interesting article by Sharon Robb on Olympic speedskater Jennifer Rodriguez and her switch to competitive cycling, her effort to reach the Olympic level in a the sport, and more. It mentions the Brian Piccolo velodrome where skaters and cyclists work out together on separate tracks. It is a great facility. For a brief movie of the place see my minimovie at:

 I've been knocking these rather trivial, large-scale thoughts around my head for some years now and wanted to write something about them. Last night, whilst watching 20/20, was the final straw! This post might complement KJG's questions in Monotony of Training.

     In the sports world, columnists declare a sports dynasty is upon us every time a team, athlete, or coach has multiple appearances in his or her version of "the big show". The papers and sports channels clamor to tout their successes. However, a success story in amateur sports has been mostly ignored in St. Louis where area skaters have represented the USA in the last 11 consecutive Olympics games. Now, St. Louis skaters are positioning themselves to continue this great tradition while continuing to be mostly ignored. 

Derek Parra was among the early adopters switching from inline to ice, and now he seems ready to switch to coaching and recruiting to help the USA continue its improvements in speedskating. As part of a Wheels on Ice initiative, Parra recently hosted a group of inliners, including Heather Lynn Richardson of High Point NC and Chad Horne of nearby Danville VA.

I sometimes imagine winning my age group in a small enough race where there might be one or two others in my group. Ha! Imagine winning the world championships in speedskating. Then imagine that same year taking the world championships in cycling! Thirty years ago, that's what Sheila Young did. Check out the great form and how close she sets down to the snow-marked lane edge in the photo attached to the story below...

Folk in Anchorage, Alaska are working on combining some skate skiing with speedskating, and that sounds like tons of fun for all involved. There's also a plan for a new speedskating oval too, which will accommodate inline skaters when there's no ice...

This is mostly a press release so if you want to know about that, click it. But an important and interesting part is that this skater wants to get his event class into the Paralympics. Good luck! From the release...

Chad Hedrick is back on the ice after several months off, and this article shows he has some new attitudes, at least for now. He seems to be planning to do less in hopes of doing better (since he didn't win all gold) and may be actually following the example of others a bit. He's in with the team this year, including their coaching (as his former coach is now in Germany). This article is an account of what for Hedrick was a warm-up race, and it has some good quotes of note. --Blake