The Cool Thing About Skater Blogs

The cool part about having transormed my website into a blog-style site is that you can leave comments. I like possibility of interactions and it makes for more information and more entertainment.

As times go by, we're all moving along and discovering the new technologies. Many skaters are realizing & harnessing the power of communication that the internet allows. When I started skating back in 1993, my club, the Toronto Inline Skating Club, Speed Skating Times, and going to races were the only way to get news from the outside world. Today, we can view results live, see pictures of the races before they're even finished, and view archives of news.


Yep, that's me in the tiger stripes front at the 1994 Junior North American Championships in Cambridge, Ontario. Sitting in 5th place is Chad Hedrick- and I had NO idea who he was. I remember talking to him the night before this 20k race, telling him that I was probably going to win because I was good at cross country skiing...
When it comes to the world of sports, the internet plays an even more imporant role in inline skating when compared to many other sports because roller/ inline speed skating as well developped in a number of ways; There are few magazines, little television coverage, conferences and expos are fare and few between, facilities are sparse, and massive events that the skating and racing community could use to network are in their infancy. The skating and racing community is learning to harness the power of the internet to create a stong community that communitcates, shares, promotes, and develops the sport.

Get ready to bookmark these links: The people who are in the trenches of inline/ roller speed skating- at the fore-front- sharing their first-hand experiences, are the skaters. They have blogs- and more and more are springing up. I've already linked to quite a few in the past, and I might re-link to some that you already know.


Andrew Love, in white, during the 2003 TIIRW
The alpha-blog- this one's by far my favourtie: Zen and the Art of Speedskating (Andrew Love). This blog is fantastic. If I could eat a blog for breakfast, this would be it. I would also eat it for lunch and dinner. I'd save my site for snack and midnight snack. Don't forget about Arjan Smit; this guy is blazing fast on wheels and on ice blades.


Scott Alridge in the thick of the action on the right wearing New Zealand's black during the senior men's 3000-meter relay on the track at the 2006 world championships in Korea. New Zealand earned the silver medal.
New Zealand's Scott Alridge is using Windows Live Spaces to share what he wants to share with the world. A few Canadian blogs: Andrew Hegarty, Sigrid Ziegler, and Candy Wong.

If you're at all interested in ice, then Ohno Zone is the place to go. There's tons of news, pictures, results; in short, all the goodies that you can possible want. My Skating Life is another blog that adds onto and shares the richness of ice speedskating. Masters speedskating on ice plays an important role for the sport just as masters races do in inline. Ross Hanham is sharing the master skater's perspective on his blog Master Speedskating News. One last link for ice, well this one's pretty crazy; it is a comprehensive data-base for ice (LT) speedskating times: Jakub Majerski's Speedskating Database.

Jordan Malone has been using YouTube to share videos. The Jordan Malone Sponsorhip Promo Video is fun to watch, filled with really cool clips. Blogs and such site are not only reserved for individual skaters; Athens to Atlanta and the Eastern Seaboard Series are two events that are using MySpace.

Of course, you can check out the MySpace sites (like A2A and ESS) to view who's subscribed to them and find tons of skaters such as Joey Mantia (check out the photo he's got of him hawking, isn't it awesome? Hmm, I wonder what good looking/ cool photographer took that picture...oh yeah, it's me!) and Olympic medalist Joey Cheek.